


Vampyre

by Icka M Chif (mischif)



Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Blanket Permission, Crack, Crossdressing, F/M, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Multi, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, Vampires, Were-Creatures, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-10-29
Updated: 2007-01-19
Packaged: 2019-11-09 07:13:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17997278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mischif/pseuds/Icka%20M%20Chif
Summary: Detectives Kudo Shin'ichi and Edogawa Conan get a strange a strange request from an even stranger person. The Kid's been bitten by a vampire and wants their help.





	1. Night Dreams 1

**Author's Note:**

> Was asked to archive some of my older DCMK fic to Ao3 to preserve it. I found my original .txt files from 17 years ago and am uploading them As Is. Errors, embarrassing author notes, and all. *cringes*

***

Your incisors will seem to be getting longer today, and you will find sunlight hurts your eyes. Probably just a cold, and nothing to worry about.  
-humorscope.com 

Night Dreams ( A Detective Conan/Magic Kaito Alternate Universe)  
By Icka! M. Chif

 

"We got mail, Niichan!" Edogawa Conan, miniature detective extraordinaire sang out as he entered the main detective office.

Kudo Shin'ichi, teenage detective extraordinaire looked up from behind his desk. "Anything good?"

"Fan mail for you, fan mail for you," The small not-boy sorted through it with a detached air. "-message from the Kid, fan mail for me, why is it I'm always afraid of fan mail for me again?"

"Because it's usually old Obaasan commenting on how dangerous our line of work is." Shin'ichi commented idly. "And inviting you to come live with them so that they can protect you and feed you cookies."

"Ah, that's right." Conan nodded and returned to sorting thru the stack in his hand. "More fan mail for you, electric bill-"

"Wait!" Shin'ichi sat up. "Back up."

"Electric bill?"

"No, before that. Aw, give me that." The taller boy reached over the desk and grabbed the stack of mail out of his smaller self's hand before falling back into the chair with a bounce. Conan snickered, wandering around the large wood desk to take a seat on the chair's armrest. 

"I swear, you're starting to act like Hattori." Shin'ichi muttered. "Calling me 'Niichan' and pulling pranks."

"No, living with Mouri gave me a sense of humour. Hattori just helped to refine it." Conan corrected. "And as Ayumi put it, 'I am the Mischief King'."

"I remember." Shin'ichi snorted. "Don't you mean 'we'?"

"What ever."

It was hard to argue some points sometimes when you both used to be the same person with the same memories and experiences. Conan used to be Shin'ichi just as Shin'ichi used to be Conan. The process of changing back from Conan into Shin'ichi had just had some... unexpected results. 

Not that either Conan or Shin'ichi were going complain about it. It was the best of both worlds, getting to remain close to Ran as Conan as well as furthering their relationship as Shin'ichi. 

They were silent, faces mirroring each other as they read, or in Conan's case, re-read the note. "Well, that's pretty straight forward." Shin'ichi commented. "No riddles, just a re-quest to meet him on our roof at 21:00 tonight."

The two exchanged looks, blue eyes mirroring identical thoughts. "I'll call Ran-neechan and let her know I'm spending the night." Conan said, leaning forward to grab the phone.

***

"It's four after the hour now." Shin'ichi checked his watch as the wind tugging his shirt collar upright and messing up his hair. 

"And no sign of the Kid." Conan finished with a sigh. Unlike his larger self, he had remembered a jacket. "Think it's a-"

"-Prank? No." Shin'ichi shoved his hands into his pants pockets. "Not many people actually know what a Kid note actually looks like outside of the police. And if it's not the Kid-"

"-They probably still need our help."

"Correct on both accounts." A shadow detached itself from the wall behind them and stepped out into the reflection of the city's lights. It was a teenage boy about their age, wearing dark jeans, turtle neck and an overly large army surplus jacket. His face was hidden by a battered black baseball cap with the brim turned over one eye and a pair of dark sunglasses. The only thing that marked him as the kid was a charm hanging from the left temple, a four leaf clover in a green triangle.

"The Kaito Kid, we presume?" Shin'ichi said, hiding his surprise at both the sudden appearance and the Kid's unusual appearance.

The Kid gave them a small mock bow. "I apologise for my dress and the location. But I figured this was as close to a safe yet neutral territory as we were going to get."

"The sky being your territory, and the roof being ours." The tall detective nodded.

"It would have been easy for us to set a trap for you." The smallest added.

"You wouldn't." The thief spoke confidently. "Or you would have never found out why I sent you the note."

The detectives traded looks. This was true. "Speaking of which-?" Conan prompted.

"I suspect that you have heard of the latest string of not-murders?" Kid commented, his relaxed posture suddenly not quite so relaxed. "The attacks in the night?"

Both detectives frowned. It had been all over the media, a series of attacks by what some were calling a vampire. The victims were all left alive, but with twin puncture marks on various veins and left extremely weak from blood loss. No one had any clue who, or what was doing it. None of the victims had any memory of what had happened, aside from a dark shadow that terrified them.

"I think I may know who's doing it." Kid looked disgruntled at the fact. "But I'm a thief, not a detective."

"You want us to take on this case?" Conan looked interested. 

Shin'ichi frowned, his forehead furrowing. "In exchange for what?"

Kid smiled. "Since I highly doubt you'd accept money from a thief, even if I could afford it, what about information? Say... about the ones who transformed you both?" He tilted his head, an amused smile curving his lips.

"Tell them why you're interested in the case." 

All 3 of the boys on the rooftop startled as a second shadow solidified, the dusky skin figure of Hattori Heiji becoming visible. "Hattori?!" The detectives chorused, surprised.

"How did you-?

"Why are you-?"

"Argh! Don't tell us-"

"-You planted another bug-"

"-In the office! I thought- "

"-That we found all of them!"

"-Argh!"

Both Kid and Hattori watched with amusement as the other 2 detectives proceeded to mirror each other's actions as they completed each other's sentences. In unison, Shin'ichi and Conan turned toward the Osaka detective. "HATTORI!"

Hattori snickered once before turning toward the thief. "Tell them. I can smell it from here."

"I suppose you'll say they won't believe me until I do." Kid remarked, one eyebrow arched over the dark glasses.

"Exactly."

The Kid sighed, reaching up to pull of his glasses. Bright ruby red eyes caught the light and glowed un-naturally at them, even thru the glass of the monocle. He pulled at his collar, revealing 2 puckered puncture marks near his collarbone, at the juncture of his neck and shoulder.

"You've been bitten." The quiet statement was from Conan. 

"Worse." Kid folded up his sun glasses and stuck them in a coat pocket, a quiet cloak of despair folding around him. "I've been infected."

"So you're a vampire now?" Shin'ichi's brow was furrowed again.

"Not yet." Hattori ambled towards the thief, looking much like a dog circling a wary cat. "He doesn't smell dead. Just of blood and spells."

"I've been to a Sorceress I know." Kid affirmed, sticking his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. "She gave me a potion to counter most of it. I just have to refrain from drinking blood until the next new moon."

"You don't sound happy."

"It's affecting my magic." The Kid growled irately, tugging off the baseball cap he was wearing and tapping it. With a small *Poof!* a blackbird appeared, perching on the edge of the hat for a moment before flying into the night sky. "That should have been a dove." 

Shin'ichi looked surprised. "You mean it's not just sleight of hand?" 

"Considering one of you two is a doppelganger, you're surprised?" Hattori smirked.

"Says the werewolf." Shin'ichi shot back as Conan shook his head and sighed.

Hattori grinned, showing fangs. He'd been bitten by accident on a case just before the re-appearance of Shin'ichi. They had quickly cleaned and disinfected the cut, but not before he'd been cursed. Every full moon, he turned into a large, friendly, if slightly over protective wolf. 

It was when someone threatened someone he cared about that one had to worry about the infamous Loupe Gaoru. It was a good thing Hattori didn't stay mad for very long.

"Which is why I took his word on showing you." Kid pointed out. He paused, fiddling with his cap. "I think I know who's doing it, but like I said, I'm not a detective. Do we have a deal or not?"

"There's more to it than that." Hattori helpfully supplied. Kid shot him a bit of a glare.

"Yes." He agreed. "But that's if they agree. Unless you want the case?"

"Nah. I'm here because I heard a rumour that the Kid got bit by a rouge blood sucker." Hattori said easily. "I just wanted to see if it's true. Thanks, by the way. Kazuha owes me 500 yen now."

"Glad to be of service."

"We'll take the case." Conan and Shin'ichi chorused. 

"Also glad to be of service." Kid nodded. "Any rules, restrictions you want to lay down before we proceed?"

"Honesty." Shin'ichi shrugged. "Any and all facts, no matter how minor may be important."

Kid smiled, the first somewhat relaxed smile since the evening started. "I'll tell you what I can."

***

"If there's one person who can be considered an 'expert' on my exploits, it's this guy." The Kid tossed down a picture onto the table. The 3 detectives and the thief had moved downstairs into the Kudo residence living room to discuss matters. Hattori had found an open window and seemed very content to sit with his back to hit, the breeze ruffling his hair as the Kudo/Conan clones perched on the sofa, watching the Kid like a hawk. 

Kid for his part, kept both ears and eyes on the twin detectives and all possible exits at all times. It was a situation he might have found humorous if he hadn't been so tense.

"Hakuba Saguru?" Conan questioned, picking up the photo. "We've met."

"I remember. Golden Dusk Mansion."

"You missed that one, Hattori." Shin'ichi supplied "You had a test."

Hattori opened one lazy green eye. "At least I'm passing High School, Mr-Missed-a-Year-of-Class."

Shin'ichi shot him a sour look. 

"Hakuba's the one that bit you?" Conan inquired, handing the photo to his larger self.

"Yes."

"Are you completely positive?" Shin'ichi pressed.

"Illusions are my specialty." Kid pointed out. "I think I'd recognise one. And there aren't many people running around the Tokyo area with blond hair, gold eyes, deerstalker hat and matching jacket."

Shin'ichi nodded. "Point."

"Thank you."

"Who do think is his next target?" Conan asked. 

"Her." Kid tossed down a second photo, this one of a wild haired girl running with a mop. She appeared to be chasing a boy in a matching school uniform that appeared to have the same build and hair as the Kid, but the face was cut off, making it hard to tell. "Nakamori Aoko."

Shin'ichi's eyebrow raised. "Inspector Nakamori Ginzo's daughter?" 

"Yep."

Hattori seemed to find this amusing and chuckled. The Kid shot him an un-amused look. "Why her?" Conan inquired.

"She's the other person Hakuba chases."

"And she chases you?" Shin'ichi grinned.

The Kid was un-amused. "She dislikes the Kid." 

Hattori snickered.

"Shove it, Dog-boy!" Kid growled irritably.

"That's 'Wolf-boy' to you!" Hattori grinned back, un-ruffled by the insult. 

Kid sulked. "And people wonder why I prefer doves."

Conan looked perplexed. "Do you two-"

"-Know each other?" Shin'ichi finished.

"Reputation only." Kid assured them.

"We're both in some similar circles." Hattori expounded. "Being 'Creatures of the Night' and all. It helps to know some people out side of 'polite' society."

"Which is how I found out about you two." Kid jerked a thumb in the direction of Hattori. "I needed someone who had some experience with the weird, but didn't want to go to Wolf-boy here."

Hattori smirked. "Cause now I've got your scent." He seemed extraordinarily pleased with himself. 

"Exactly." 

Hattori stretched, several joints popping audibly. "Not to worry, Thief-boy. I'm not interested in chasing you at the moment." He grinned, a gleam in his eye that had nothing to do with humour and everything to do with hunting. "Rumour has it that you're chasing after the Puzzle Organization. Little leg work on my end revealed that Puzzle works for a larger group. One that the Twins here familiar with."

"The Black Ops." The words were spoken with one voice, both Shin'ichi and Conan's faces grim.

"Pin-pon!" Hattori grinned. "Now we're all on the same page!"

Kid glanced over at the pair. "Is he always like this?"

"He used to be worse." Conan deadpanned.

"Oh."

Shin'ichi cleared his throat. "Back to the subject, what do you want us to do about it?" 

The Kid sighed. "Your resources are better than mine." He grudgingly admitted. "Anyway to keep her safe?"

Conan and Shin'ichi traded looks, their twin minds working on the problem. "She can stay here."

"You'd just have to think of-

"-some way to bring her here."

"Leave that to me." The thief said in such a way that none of them would have been surprised if he managed to get her there by rolling her up in a carpet and dragging her over his shoulder. 

"Alright." Shin'ichi nodded. "And payment?"

"Will be delivered when this is over." Kid said, raising an eyebrow as if daring them to comment that he wouldn't hold up to his end of the deal. "And if you're afraid I'm going to renege, you can always have Wolfy track me down."

"That won't be necessary." Conan assured him.

The Kid looked pleased. "Good."

"Anything else?" Shin'ichi asked.

"Just this." The Kid pulled something large and metallic out of a pocket and tossed it to the smallest of the detectives. "I want that back."

Conan caught the object and inspected it. "Your gun?"

"Card gun." The Thief corrected. "In case I do end up going schizo. It can't kill, but it can slice the heck out of something. I want someone to be able to stop me. And when you get down to it, paper cards are just refined wood pulp."

Conan gave him a sceptical look. "Wouldn't Shin'ichi or Hattori be a better choice for this then?"

The Kid gave him a half grin. "No one ever expects a kid to have a gun. And I'm used to dealing with you instead of them. No offence, Kudo-kun, Wolf-boy." 

"None taken." Shin'ichi said easily as Hattori snickered. He was enjoying himself way too much. Conan nodded, and tucked the card gun away somewhere out of sight.

"Oh, catch!" Shin'ichi tossed something small and silver at the Kaito Kid. 

The darkly dressed boy caught it easily and inspected it. "Nice crucifix." He commented before tossing it back. "Looks like it's solid silver too."

"Thanks..." Shin'ichi gave him a wide-eyed blank look as he caught it. "It is."

The Kid nodded. "Good night. Edogawa. Hattori." He turned to leave in the normal fashion, -out the front door. 

Hattori rose as well and shot his friend an amused look. "Really, Kudo. You should know better than that."

Shin'ichi shrugged. "It was worth a shot. I couldn't find a hand mirror in time to see if he had a reflection."

"He did." Conan pointed out. "You could see his reflection in the windows."

Shin'ichi snorted dryly. "Thanks."

"Think you need to do some more research." Hattori grinned wolfily, giving them a friendly wave. "Catch you later!"

"Later." Conan waved, smirking at his other self. Shin'ichi gave him a distracted wave, already off in another world, pondering what he knew about vampires.

Hattori smiled to himself and ran to catch up with the shadow that had just made it to the sidewalk. "Yo! Wait a second!"

The Kid paused at the gate, waiting for the dark skinned boy to catch up. "Yeah?"

"Before you go..." Hattori rummaged in his pockets for a second, then handed him few slips of paper and a pen. "Write down your real name on one, and Aoko's name on the other and fold them up. I won't look at it, I promise."

The Kid's eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"Omamori." The werewolf fished a small bag on a string from around his neck. "Kazuha makes them. She's pretty good at making talismans, ofuda, and protective charms. They work better if they've got some sort of attachment to the person, either something that used to belong to them, but a name will work."

Kid looked at him, weighing the pros and cons in his mind for a minute before nodding. "This is probably a bad idea..." The Thief muttered. "But you've got a reputation for being honest and also knowing when to keep your mouth shut." 

Hattori's mouth curved up. "High praise."

"Thanks." The Kid folded the paper into small paper roses with quick, deft movements of his fingers. "The other sad fact is that I could probably use all the help I can get right now."

"Agreed." Hattori said smoothly. "What did your sorceress tell you about the potion she gave you?"

"It increases the urge to feed." The Kid held out the paper roses in the palm of his hand. "Fortunately, it also makes it very hard to do so."

"You're lucky then." He scooped up the roses and stuck them in a pocket. "Any other possibilities to counter it?"

"...She mentioned that killing the originator might work." The Kid said reluctantly. 

"But you're not a killer."

"Exactly. Even if it is tempting sometimes."

Hattori grinned, an impressive display of fangs flashing in the moonlight. "It is, isn't it?"

***

A cold nose on the back of her neck caused Kazuha to startle, dropping her pencil and sending it skittering across her homework. "Heiji!" She hissed, keeping her voice down. She'd learned that it did no good to try to explain to him that no, she couldn't sense him when he snuck into her room late at night for to talk, he simply didn't seem to get it.

"Hey, Kazuha." She could practically hear the smile in his voice as he rested his chin on the top of her head. She relaxed against him, reaching back to wrap a hand around his neck, weaving her fingers into his hair. 

"How's your night going?"

He let out a breath, tickling her hair. "Fair." He shifted, resting his mouth and nose against her skin, causing her to smile. 

Ever since he had been bitten by the werewolf, not only had his sense of smell improved, but he'd become much more tactile. Subtle things mostly, leaning against each other in public, or as he had done now, checking her scent around her neck. He'd never claimed to be anything more than close friends or brother and sister, but it made her feel better, knowing he didn't do it to anyone else. 

"Only fair?"

"Well, you now owe me 500 yen." He moved, leaning against the desk beside her. "The Kid's been bit by a Vampire. He's already been to a sorceress-"

"Koizumi?" She asked. The Dark Witch had a bit of an eccentric reputation, but was a good potion maker and spell caster. 

"Looked like it. He's got a potion to counter-act the vampiric blood, so he may not turn into one." He shrugged. "At least he's not a ghoul, that's always sad."

"Yeah." Kazuha stayed mostly on the side lines of Heiji's cases, but she had seen enough to know more than her fair share. It was a small blessing that neither of their parents had found out about the nature of some of his more recent cases. 

-Just as it was a small blessing that no-one had caught him sneaking into her bedroom late at night to discuss these late-night cases.

He continued. "The Kid's bringing a friend to Kudos' for protection, he thinks she'll be attacked next-"

An eyebrow rose. "'She'?"

"She." He grinned. "Looks like the thief has a crush on Inspector Nakamori's daughter."

"Ouch." That had to be rough. 

"You're telling me." He grinned, obviously finding humour in the situation. "And he's going to help them hunt down the guy who bit him. Thinks he knows who it is."

"Anything I can do to help?" She offered, shifting so that she was leaning on him a bit. He was warm and nice to lean against.

He reached into a pocket and pulled out 2 small paper roses. "You up for making some omamori tonight?"

She took them, trying to get a feel for them. One rose was filled with a protective feeling, the other with a deluded sense of mischief and of recent despair. The Kid and the girl he wanted to protect. She smiled at him. "Not a problem."

"Thanks." He yawned, looking tired. "Hey, can I camp out here tonight?"

Kazuha gave him a mock glare and pushed him out of the window. "No. Go home."

"Dangit."

***

"Ew." Hattori wrinkled his nose, as he took a step inside the Kudo residence. "Who's been eating Italian?"

"My other self." Conan looked disgusted with his 'older brother' as he shut the door behind the Osaka detective. "Garlic. I told him to brush his teeth, but he won't believe me."

"Well, it may not work on vampires, but it works on me." Hattori fanned the air in front of his face. "It stinks." 

"That's what I said!" Conan waved his hands in the air, exasperated. "I think the Kid took refuge upstairs after the incident with the holy water."

"Holy water?" 

"Yeah. Split it all over the front of his shirt. Kid wasn't amused, and I don't blame him."

Hattori shook his head. "I'm not going to ask. Seriously. In the meantime, can you tell him that I'm not going anywhere near him until he smells less like something the cat rolled around on before dragging inside?"

Conan nodded. "With pleasure."

"Thanks. Oh, Kazuha's over with 'Neechan for some girl time." Hattori informed him. With that, he shook his head one more time and walked up the stairs, deciding that he really didn't want to think about the smirking grin on the smallest boy's face as Conan went in search of his other self.

***

"Figures you'd be here." Hattori looked down at the figure on the floor, his back against the bed that a wild haired girl was sleeping in.

The Kid cracked open a crimson ruby eye, which caught the light and reflected it back. Hattori took it as an invitation and crouched down in front of the sprawled boy. "Guess you must be pretty worried about her." He commented with a grin.

"I am not." The Kid growled, but there was a distinct lack of conviction in his tone. "It just happens to be a convent place to think, away from the Twit Twins."

"Uh-huh. Right." Hattori nodded, but didn't seem convinced. He pulled out some paper wrapped bars from his pocket. "Here. Break off a piece and let it melt in your mouth. Crankiness is a sure sign of low blood sugar."

"I'm not hungry." The Kid looked away. "Can't keep anything down anyway."

"Should be able to keep this down." The Osaka detective grinned, tossing one of the bars at the thief. The latter caught it out of reflex.

"Chocolate?"

"Dark Chocolate, actually. You know how girls claim that chocolate is like blood?" Hattori smirked, opening a chocolate bar for himself. "They're not far wrong."

The Kid snorted, then did as he'd been bid. His eyes closed as the first bit of sugar melted on his tongue, some of the pinched look fading from his face as it relaxed into a more peaceful expression. 

"Thanks." The Kid finally commented, breaking off another piece and popping it into his mouth without opening his eyes. "How'd you know?"

"There's a little troll guy who runs a portal between Osaka and Tokyo, down in the subway stations." Hattori explained, leaning back on his heels. "He won't take money, preferring gifts of blood if he can get it, but he'll take fresh meat, beef or chocolate. If it works for him, figured it'd work for you. Only the blood and fresh meat part was out."

"So that's how you get back and forth from Osaka and Beika so fast." Kid smirked. "Been wondering about that."

Hattori shrugged. "It works. Saves a bunch on petrol too."

"I'll bet."

"How did you get her come here anyway?" Hattori commented, motioning to the slumbering girl behind the thief. 

"I told her a truth and she came with me."

"I thought there was only one truth."

"There are many one truths." The Kid commented idly, giving him a small smile. "That's what makes you detectives such an interesting lot. You take the world in all it's shades of grey and turn it into one of black and white. It's either good, or bad. Even your bad guys wear black for you."

"By that line of reasoning, shouldn't you be wearing black instead of white then?" Hattori playfully smirked.

"Ah," The Kid waggled a finger at him. "But during the night, even bright white is just shades of grey."

Hattori mused this over a minute before nodding. "True. I do have to admit though that I'm actually surprised you brought her here at all. With this many detectives in the house, you might as well be hanging a 'Hello my name is' sign around your neck."

"And I'm surprised that you haven't jumped at the blatant opportunity to catch me." 

"Let's see..." The werewolf grinned. "Go after crazed homicidal murderers who hurt my friends and killed people, or grab a prankster thief who steals but doesn't hurt anyone. Hmm.. tough choice." The sarcasm practically oozed.

Kid smirked, a dry expression. "So I'm small potatoes."

"Lower priority." Hattori corrected. "We can chase you anytime, but if you can help us catch the bigger prey, we would rather do that."

"I've been wondering why Kudo and Edogawa haven't jumped me yet." The thief muttered, closing his eyes with a weary mood as he motioned to the sleeping girl with one hand. "We've been friends longer than I've been the Kid." He explained. "I'm not going to let her get hurt just because of my night job. 

"-And I was only planning on having to dance around the Kudos. You weren't a part of the equation." He cracked open an eye, the intelligence and craftiness of a fox shining thru despite the recent weariness. 

"So sorry." Hattori said, looking not the least apologetic, but slightly pleased with the straight answer. "But wouldn't it have been easier to do this as yourself?"

"Probably." The thief shrugged again, eating another piece of chocolate. "But this is between them and the Kid, not Nakamori-kun and Aoko-chan. And if I'm going down, I'm going down fighting. Even if it means the end of the Phantom Thief."

"Good answer." A dual set of footsteps, out of long habit and practice in synch with each other caused them to look up. Shin'ichi and Conan, mirror each other's pose in the doorway looked down on them. Conan and Shin'ichi offered the thief a slight grin. 

"Especially considering-"

"-that we've said almost the exact same thing-"

"-about a certain young woman-"

"-in our lives."

Both Shin'ichi and Conan had a faint blush as they finished the sentence. The thief and the twin detectives exchanged a look, a sort of understanding passing between them. 

Hattori let loose a short bark of laughter. "And how is 'Neechan anyway?"

"Waiting downstairs with Kazuha-neechan." Conan's grin turned sheepish.

Shin'ichi explained. "Evidently, she doesn't trust us to keep an eye on a girl by ourselves."

"Afraid that she'll steal your heart away from her?" Hattori snickered. "Yeah, Neechan is the possessive type." It went without saying that both Kudo and Conan were the same way about a certain Mouri Ran.

"I don't think you have anything to worry about." The Kid yawned and stretched, revealing an impressive pair of elongated eye-teeth of his own. The teeth retracted back into his mouth, much the way a snakes would as he finished the yawn and scratched his head, messing up his already wild hair. He shot them an apologetic grin. "You don't run nearly fast enough to keep ahead of Aoko."

"Martial arts?" Shin'ichi challenged.

"Mop."

That drew blank looks from all three detectives. 

"Speaking of which." The Kid gracefully got to his feet, and pulled a mop out from under his coat, which should not have been able to conceal it, much less hold it while sitting down. He set it next to the slumbering girl, within easy arms reach. "I gave her a bit of sleeping gas." He explained. "She should sleep peacefully unless woken."

"We'd better inform Ran-neechan of that." Conan said, motioning for everyone to head out of the room. 

"I think it's time to return to the scene of the crime."

***

"Here's where it happened." The Kid looked vaguely sick as he stared at the brick wall, darker splotches that looked suspiciously like blood staining the already red bricks. He looked away, scanning the area. The detectives examined it, Conan looking low, Shin'ichi looking high and Hattori wandering around like a bloodhound searching for a scent.

"Not much to tell." Shin'ichi finally commented several minutes later, shoving his hands in his pockets. His smaller self nodded, mimicking the pose.

"Not many people thru here either." Hattori commented. "But something reeks of old death."

The Kid rubbed the bites on his neck, looking a bit nervous. "Death?" 

"Me." The 4 boys looked up to see a trench coated figure glide out of the darkness to meet them. 

Kid hissed, sounding much like an angry cat. "Hakuba."

"Kaitou." The blond detective looked at him for a moment before grinning, his amber eyes glowing much the same way the Kid's crimson eyes did in the light. "So nice to see you again."

"Wish I could say the same."

Hattori put an arm out, stopping the Kid from moving towards the newcomer. "Something's not right." The werewolf growled, his body tense. 

"Very perceptive." Hakuba agreed. "But I'm sad to say that that means you must die. Oh, and the other detectives as well."

"And me?" Kid demanded.

Hakuba grinned. It wasn't pleasant.

"How'd your vampire research go?" Conan asked his other self in a soft voice.

"I can tell you that Crosses, Sunlight, Holy Water and Garlic are definitely out." Shin'ichi replied, equally soft. "That leaves staking, beheading and fire."

"I can do fire." The Kid promised, an un-holy gleam in his eyes.

Conan spared him a glance. "Something less lethal first, maybe?"

"Spoilsport."

"He's not a vampire anyway." Hattori growled. 

"Huh?"

Hakuba mock-sulked. "You're spoiling all my fun. Bad puppy! No biscuit."

"Maybe I should have brought the garlic anyway." Shin'ichi muttered.

Hattori, Conan and the Kid's response was unanimous and instantaneous. "NO." 

"Well, it's too late for childish pranks anyway." Hakuba smiled, shifting moods. "I'm afraid that it's time for you to die horrible agonizing deaths. Well, except for the thief. We've got plans for him."

"That is so cliché." Conan shook his head. "Can't you think up anything unique to say?"

"Witty banter was never his forte." Kid retorted. He didn't look pleased at the idea of 'plans' for him.

"He's not alive." Hattori warned, backing up as Hakuba advanced. 

"So what is he?" Shin'ichi demanded, backing up as well.

Hattori gave him a quick half shrug. "Dead."

"Dead?!"

"Dead."

"Huh." The thief quipped, a thoughtful look flittering across his face. "You really can't tell a difference."

"Look out!" The latter was from Conan as Hakuba suddenly blurred, charging at the small group. The blond grabbed Conan and threw him into the air. "Waaagh!"

"I got him!" Hattori chased after the flying boy, jumping up to catch him in mid-air. He landed safely in a crouch several yards behind the other 2. "You okay?" 

"Remind me not to make any more fetch jokes around you." Conan commented, sliding out of the werewolf's grip to stand on his own feet.

Shin'ichi reached under his jacket, just under the sleeve. "Got anything useful?" He asked the Kid.

Kid didn't spare him a glance, keeping a sharp eye on Hakuba, who was now grinning from ear to ear as he looked between the 2 boys, deciding who to attack next. The grin looked completely out of place on the usually solemn faced boy. "I'm better at running than fighting."

"Right." Shin'ichi pulled out a gun, screwing on a silencer on the end.

"I see you're prepared, however."

"Never hurts in this line of business."

"Let's move it, people." Hattori growled, keeping close to Conan. 

Hakuba eyed them like a cat playing with a mouse. He was going to inflict major pain on them if given a chance, and he was going to enjoy it. 

Shin'ichi beat him to the punch, almost casually lining up the shot and firing. Hakuba flinched, the bullet hitting him in the leg. He took a step forward and continued. The detective fired again, watching with horrified eyes as the wounds that didn't bleed healed before their eyes. "Bullets won't work!" 

"Run!" Hattori advised, picking up Conan and tossing him over a shoulder. Shin'ichi and Kid took his advice and scurried back, keeping the dead detective in sight at all times.

Conan took advantage of the change in height to fire a dart from his watch. It was a perfect hit, but had no effect on the blond detective. "No good!"

Hakuba giggled. Some sounds should never be uttered by anybody, dead or not.

"I got an idea!" Kid motioned for the others to keep moving as he pulled a handful of paper out of his pocket and quickly sorted thru them. As soon as the other 3 passed him, he tossed one at Hakuba. 

"Trap card! Activate!"

There was a brief flash of light, then a swirling magic circle appeared around the staggering teenager. Hakuba struggled against it for a moment, then slowly fell over, the effects of the spell easing him down.

"What did you do?" Shin'ichi gasped. 

"Simple summoning spell." Kid sagged against the wall, a few beads of sweat trickling down the side of his face. The spell had obviously taken more out of him that he would have probably admitted.

Conan picked the card up from the ground. "Duel Monsters-?"

"Duel Monsters?!" Hattori spun towards the thief. "You do NOT use Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards to summon magic!"

"Why not?" Kid asked, a touch of humour colouring his tone. "It worked, didn't it?"

"Yes, but..." Hattori trailed off, obviously having difficulty wrapping his mind around using duelling cards for anything other than duelling.

"I have some Digimon cards too." Kid gave him a half grin. "Want to see if I can Digivolve you to Wergarurumon?"

Hattori sweatdropped. "Noo..."

"Are there any kind of playing cards you -don't- have?" Conan asked while his bigger self checked Hakuba.

Kid mused it over for a moment. "Clow Cards. I absolutely refuse to act like a magical girl."

Hattori found this immensely funny for some reason and snickered.

"Can you two stop goofing off and give me a hand here?" Shin'ichi snapped, giving Hattori a glare for goofing off as he attempted to lift Hakuba. "We need to get him to Haibara and he's heavy!"

***

"Congratulations." Ai said dryly as they plunked the limp body of Hakuba Saguru onto the table she had just cleared off. "It's a dead body."

"A dead body that attacked us." Conan clarified.

"My mistake." The miniature scientist said loftily, pulling on a pair of gloves. "And here I was just complaining that you never bring me anything interesting."

"Here." Kid placed a handkerchief over Hakuba's face then wiped it off. An over sized red ribbon bow was now neatly tied into his hair. "Now he's gift wrapped for you!"

Ai raised an eyebrow. "You're too kind."

"I try."

Shin'ichi frowned. "I thought you were having trouble with your magic." 

"I am." Kid agreed. "But what kind of Magician would I be if I didn't know -some- sleight of hand?"

Shin'ichi opened his mouth to comment, then closed it again. 

"How is he?" Conan asked, poking the body on the table. 

Ai pulled on a pair of gloves, a serious look in her face. "I'm going to need an old Taoist Monk and a young Shinto Priest."

"Really?"

She looked away. "No. Actually, he'll probably wake up on his own any time now."

As if on cue, Hakuba suddenly sat up, screaming at the top of his lungs and scurrying as far back on the table as he could go without falling off. "AHHHH!! THE MIMES ARE GONNA EAT ME!!!"

Everyone stared at the blond, who stared back unseeing, his gold eyes wide and terrified.

"Well, that's a new one." Ai finally remarked, breaking the tension.

"Wrong bumper sticker." Kid informed Hakuba in a remarkably patient tone. "It's 'Can't sleep, the CLOWNS will eat me'."

Intelligence slowly replaced panic in the English detective's eyes. "Kaito-kun?" He puzzled. "What are you doing here?"

"You bit me!!!"

Hakuba looked indignant. "I did not."

"You did too!" The Kid pulled down his collar to show off the bite marks. "What else do you call these?!"

"Someone else's denture marks." Ai deadpanned.

The thief blinked. "Huh?"

Ai reached over from her perch on a footstool and pulled back Hakuba's lips to expose his teeth and gums. "Flat teeth. He couldn't have bit you." She explained, then pulled a flashlight out of her pocket and began examining him with a detached professional air. 

Hakuba, not having a clue as to what was going on, just sat there and let her.

"So I didn't get bit by Hakuba?" Kid puzzled, rubbing the bite marks. 

Hattori grinned. "Do you feel better now?" 

The Kid paused, then nodded. "Yes and no. But now I want to know who did bite me."

"So do I." Shin'ichi and Conan echoed, frowning.

Ai tapped Hakuba. "Take off your shirt, please."

Hakuba just stared at the tiny girl.

"Relax." Conan chuckled. "She's a professional."

"Professional what?" Kid wanted to know.

"Doctor, scientist and pain in the rear." Ai deadpanned. "Now off with your shirt so I can finish my examination."

Hakuba blinked, then did as he was told. He still wasn't sure what was going on, but for the time being, following orders appeared to be the best solution. And truth be told, he didn't feel all that great either.

Shin'ichi raised an eyebrow at the smirking thief. "You're in a better mood."

"It's amazing how having a bite to eat will improve your outlook." Kid grinned.

Conan and Shin'ichi froze, staring at him with alarmed eyes. In the background, Hattori covered his mouth to hide a snicker.

The Kid's turned innocent as he pulled a half-eaten bar of chocolate out of his pocket. "Want a bite?"

The twins visibly relaxed. "Thanks-"

"-but no thanks."

The Kid shrugged, broke off a piece and tossed it in the air, catching it in his mouth. Hattori got his laughter under control, and joined the group. "Ne, Hakuba-kun, what is the last thing you remember?"

"Besides waking up here?" Hakuba asked, his attention more on what Ai was up to rather than the antics of the thief.

"Yeah."

"The last thing I remember..." Hakuba's brows came down as he rubbed the back of his head. "I was investigating a case when I knocked out by some men dressed in black-"

"BLACK?!" Shin'ichi and Conan interrupted, their full attention gained.

Hakuba raised an eyebrow. "Black."

"What did they look like?" Shin'ichi pressed.

Conan nodded. "This is really important!"

"One was tall, with long silver hair. The other was shorter, stockier. There may have been a third, I don't remember." Hakuba rubbed his forehead, as if trying to get his brain to work right. "I only got a glimpse of them before I was hit from behind."

"Sounds like-"

"-Gin and-"

"Vodka." The twins growled. 

Hakuba and Kid looked confused. "Alcoholic drinks?" Kid asked.

"The Black Organization." Hattori explained, since the other detectives looked about ready to spit nails. "They're the ones that did this to him."

"Huh?" Hakuba looked clueless. "Who?"

"Allow me to introduce Kudo Shin'ichi and Edogawa Conan, the Famed Detective of the East." Kid said, with a mock flourish.

"Should it be 'Detectives'?" Hakuba asked suspiciously.

"Yes-"

"-and no." The twins shrugged.

"It's a-"

"-Long story."

"You've got time." Ai assured them, still prodding Hakuba. Hakuba just watched the blonde girl with a puzzled expression.

The twins exchanged a look and shrugged. "Alright..."

"The truth is-"

"-we're not exactly sure ourselves." They looked embarrassed by the fact. 

Hattori snickered and pulled up a chair. Kid's eyebrow raised, and he found a perch of his own on a desk corner while the twins elected to stand.

"It started when Conan discovered what he thought was a possible headquarters of the Black Organization." Conan started. Hakuba opened his mouth to point out that the small detective was Conan, but a shake of Hattori's head caused him to shut it again.

"-And being the detective genius you are, you didn't think to ask for help." Ai added, the faintest traces of sarcasm in her voice.

The twins had the grace to look vaguely embarrassed again. "Yeah."

"Got in okay-"

"-got caught just as easily."

"They would have killed me, except-"

"-that they needed a guinea pig-"

"-for a project of theirs."

"Doppelganger." Hattori supplied. 

The Twins nodded. "That's when things get confusing." Shin'ichi pressed his hand against his forehead as in remembered pain while Conan's face turned solemn and he looked at the floor, his eyes distant.

"I escaped-"

"-and ran into myself. We each-"

"-remember the same exact thing-"

"-Down to the smallest detail."

"So we don't know which one of us is the original-"

"-And which is the doppelganger." Shin'ichi and Conan shared an amused smile.

"-Not that it really matters-"

"-to us which one-"

"-is which."

"They caught us again and-

"-They couldn't tell which was which either."

"So we both ended up being used as guinea pigs."

Hakuba snorted, an un-amused sound. "Not the most pleasant of things." 

The Twins agreed. "Yeah." 

"We got free again-"

"-it was harder the second time. But they weren't expecting us to work together-"

"-or be very resourceful. Fortunately, neither Gin or Vodka recognised me."

"But on the way out, we forgot one small detail."

"-how explosive sawdust is." They both looked embarrassed as Hattori cracked up. The resulting explosion had been on the news even as far as Osaka. There had been nothing left of the factory, much less clue that remained as to what may have been inside of it.

"I started changing shortly after that." Shin'ichi shrugged. "Conan found a phone and was able to get Ai and Dr. Agasa to help us home."

"After that, life resumed as it has been." Conan echoed his other self's gesture. "Only without any sign of the Black Organization or any of their schemes. They've always been impossible to find-"

"-but it's like they vanished."

"Or moved farther underground. That is until today."

Everyone turned to look at Hakuba, who seemed to be looking at something deep inside of him. The blond finally shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't help you. I can't remember where they were. Just the shadows."

"Ah, well." Kid sighed with playful drama. "It looks like you're going to get your payment a little bit early after all, detectives."

Conan and Shin'ichi gave the thief a searching look that would have made lesser men squirm. "Why are they so interested in you anyway?" Shin'ichi asked.

The Kid shrugged, but was saved from having to answer by noises from upstairs.

"Shin'ichi?" Ran's musical voice floated from upstairs. "Conan-kun?"

Both Shin'ichi and Conan turned to answer it. "Down here!"

"There you are." Ran and Kazuha came down the stairs, their slight figures shadowed by another one carrying a long pole with something on it. 

The Kid did a quick double take, startling the detectives. In a flash, the sunglasses were back on his face and the monocle disappeared.

"I hope you don't mind, but Kazuha-chan wanted to check on Hattori-kun, and Aoko-chan wanted to come too." Ran chirped as they stepped into the light of the lab.

"Hellooo..." Aoko's voice trailed off as the girls stopped and stared at the shirtless detective. "Hakuba?"

"Is he the one you were telling me about?" Ran asked as Shin'ichi and Conan looked less than impressed at the girls reaction.

Kazuha smirked and walked over to lean against Hattori. "I've seen better." She whispered softly. He grinned and wrapped an arm around her waist.

Aoko shook her head. "No. That's this one." She swung her mop at the Kid, who promptly dodged it. "Kaito! What's the big idea of leaving a mop next to the bed? Was that a hint that I need to clean or something?!"

"If the mop fits..." The Kid moved like grinning liquid mercury personified, suddenly appearing behind her. She growled, tightening her grip on the mop and stalking after him as he deftly moved backwards.

"And I thought *Swing* that you said *swoosh!* that someone was *swish!* after Hakuba-kun *whoosh!* but he looks FINE to me!" The wild haired girl shouted, chasing after him.

Hakuba raised an eyebrow, watching the usual chase with a bored air. "I think I'll take that as a compliment." He mused, noting that the participants of the chase were a little bit slower today than normal. 

The other detectives however, watched with amazement as the 2 figures almost appeared to dance around the room without ever accidentally knocking anything over, even when the thief took to nearly climbing the walls and ceiling.

"Sheesh." Conan sweatdropped. "No wonder no one can touch him."

Ai poked Hakuba in the side, gaining his attention. "Take your pants off please."

Hakuba just stared.

-To Be Continued...-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special Thanks to Hell's Hauntress for catching my mistakes ^^;;, and to Ysabet, Loqi and Magik for support and beta-reading this insanity!!!
> 
> This thing started as just a short silly AU fic triggered by a song on the KROQ After Hours show by Junkie XL called [Beauty that Never fades](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ2C6G1B_FI) and some really cool Japanese fanarts I was looking at after midnight one night.
> 
> Then Hattori showed up, informed us that hey! he was going to be in the fic, he going to be a werewolf and going to be the Kid's friend, thank you very much. Hakuba was already in here and dead, and having both Shin'ichi and Conan working together was something that had been haunting us for a while, so that really didn't matter much. 
> 
> And this just kept getting bigger.
> 
> Had hoped to finish this by Halloween as a Halloween treat, but then Vermouth decided to make her move. And Akako butted in. And the girls wanted to kick butt.
> 
> Then BUNNIES invaded the fic.
> 
> It was right about there we realised that this just might take some time... ~_~


	2. Night Dreams 2

You might consider picking up some holy water and a few stout wooden stakes. They'll come in handy soon, although I'm not sure how.  
-humorscope.com

 

.................//Ö\\\\........... 

 

"So..." Ran grinned, as she set three bowls of ice cream down on the table. "Kaito-kun or Hakuba-kun?"

Aoko gave her a blank look. "Huh? What about them?"

Kazuha grinned conspiratorially. "Who do you like better?"

Aoko's blank look turned even blanker. "What? Oh!" She laughed, shaking her head. "No, no! Hakuba-kun is just a classmate of ours. And Kaito and I have been friends for YEARS. That's all."

"Uh-huh. And that's why you were staring at Hakuba-kun while he had his shirt off." Kazuha teased. "And then chased Kaito-kun around like that." 

"But I always chase Kaito around." The wild haired girl protested, fiddling with the blue silk omamori around her neck that Kazuha had given her. "And I've never seen Hakuba with his shirt off before. He's a lot more... muscular than I would have thought."

"Okay." Ran nodded, taking her word for it. "Alright, what would you say is their best physical attribute?"

"Who?" Aoko inquired, looking puzzled.

"Hakuba-kun and Kaito-kun."

"Hmm...." Aoko took a bite of her ice cream, musing the question over. "I'm not sure about Hakuba-kun, but I'd have to say Kaito's hands are his best feature. And his grin."

"What about his gymnastic skills?" Kazuha wanted to know. "I've never seen anyone move like that before!"

"Really?" Aoko blinked in surprise. "He was a bit off today, we're usually faster."

"Faster?!"

"Umm-hmm..." She nodded, taking a bite of ice cream. "Ooh, Vanilla. Don't tell him I said so, but I really think his hands are his best feature. He's a magician, and you should see what he can do with a simple ball or a deck of cards. He's really very impressive."

The other girls mused it over, momentarily lapsing into silence as they savoured their ice cream.

"What about you?" Aoko inquired. "What's Kudo-kun's best feature?"

"Shin'ichi?" Ran glanced around for a second, double-checking that, yes the boys were gone. "When he's not being a mystery nut, he loves to play soccer." She grinned, blushing faintly. "He's got nice legs, and a really good butt."

"So that's why you were going to all of his games!" Kazuha giggled. "Those little soccer shorts!"

"Ka-chan!" Ran made a face at the pony-tailed girl. "Fine. Your turn. Hattori-kun's best feature."

"That's easy." Kazuha informed them promptly, flexing one arm. "His shoulders."

"Shoulders?" Aoko's eyebrow rose.

Kazuha smirked. "Kendo does a boy -good-."

The girls momentarily dissolved into giggles. 

"Don't you dare tell him though!" Kazuha scolded, once they got their breath back "He's got a big enough ego as it is!"

"It's okay." Ran assured her with a grin. "The boys would probably just think that this is all just silly girls talk anyway."

"It is just silly girls talk." Aoko pointed out.

"So?" Kazuha retorted. "They don't need to know it."

"That's true."

"What about his fur?" Ran inquired of the Osaka girl with a wicked grin.

Kazuha turned fuchsia as Ran dissolved into giggles. 

"Huh?" Aoko just looked confused.

"Never mind." Ran giggled, letting her friend off the hook. "Alright. Hakuba."

"Hm..." The girls paused, musing. 

"I'm not sure." Aoko admitted. "He's in my class, but he usually sticks to himself, trying to chase the Kid. Either that or hit on Kaito."

"You're kidding."

"Um..." Aoko took a bite of ice cream, evading the question. 

"Well..." Kazuha mused. "He looks exotic. Gold eyes and hair..."

"He's build pretty nicely too." Ran added with a bit of a grin. "Very solid, almost dense."

Aoko smirked. "His mental state or his body?" 

"Aoko-chan!"

"He did look pretty out of it." Kazuha mused. 

"Hmm. Speaking of out of it..." Aoko commented, suddenly moody. "I hope the guys are doing okay. Kaito's been acting funny the past couple of days. It's like something's wrong, but he won't tell me what it is."

"Don't worry about it." Kazuha assured her. "They do this all the time. Act strange because of a case, and just when you start to get really concerned, everything goes back to normal. It's the same thing every time."

Ran nodded. "It doesn't mean we worry about them any less when they do this though."

"Yup." Kazuha agreed with forced cheerfulness. "Just because they're our mystery loving idiots doesn't make them any less insane."

 

.......//Ö\\\\........... 

 

"It's late night, it's black out, there's no moon, we're about to enter a dark creepy looking building that most likely is hiding our worst enemy and you're wearing -sunglasses-?" Conan commented in disbelief.

"Yup."

"You're even more insane than I thought."

The Kid grinned. "Thanks!"

"That wasn't a compliment." Shin'ichi grumbled.

"We ready to go?" Hattori requested, shifting impatiently. "Kid, you got the omamori?"

"Right here." The thief patted his chest, where the small black bag fell right above his heart. He wasn't sure why it was so important, but the Kansai werewolf was insistent, so he wore it. 

Somehow, he got the feeling he didn't want to be on Hattori's bad side.

"Wait a moment..." Conan frowned. "I was just thinking,"

"You think?" 

"Quiet you." Shin'ichi mock cuffed Hattori for the comment.

Conan shot his other self a grateful look before turning back to the subject at hand. "But what happens once we defeat who ever is behind this?"

"What do you mean?" Shin'ichi frowned.

"Well, from what Ai said, Zombies can't really think or move on their own. Who ever killed Hakuba put a lot of work and energy into him to make him move and act as freely as he did back in the alley."

"Fastest way to stop a Zombie is usually to either remove its head or stop who ever is controlling them." Hattori explained. "After that, the spells animating the bodies disappear and then the bodies just fall down and... decay..."

Everyone turned to look at the stoic English Detective. He looked back at them with a bland expression. "And?" He asked mildly.

"You're a royal pain in the keister, but even I don't wish that for you." The Kid's face had fallen into an expressionless poker face, but the concern was still easily apparent.

"The sentiment is appreciated, but un-necessary." Hakuba informed them in a brisk business like matter. "You are failing to take into account the fact that I am already dead. And regardless of that, we still must put an end to this."

"Hey, who knows?" Hattori said optimistically. "Maybe the Kid's spell backfired in more ways than one and you'll make it through this."

Hakuba shrugged. "Unlikely. Now, if this discussion is over, we still have a fiendish organisation of the un-dead to stop."

Without another word, the un-dead detective moved forward, sticking to the shadows as he crept up to the entrance.

The other detectives pensively followed, the Kid going last, cursing the entire time about stupid stubborn British detectives with icicles shoved up some very un-comfortable places.

 

...//Ö\\\\................ 

 

Between the Kid's lock picking skills and Hattori and Hakuba's eagerness just to knock the dumb door down, they got into the building rather quickly. 

Quietly was another matter entirely. They didn't get three steps into the darken interior of the building before something sent up a hideous ear-splitting screeching racket.

Conan flipped on his light, shining it in the direction of the noise.

"It's a Screaming Red Zombie?" Hakuba puzzled at the obvious dead creature, which oozed red liquid from every pore in its body.

"Well, that is the name of an alcoholic drink." Shin'ichi pointed out.

"So is 'Screaming Orgasm' but you don't see them using that, do you?" The Kid retorted.

Conan shot him a bland look. "Pervert."

"I'm a teenage male. There's a difference."

"Can we debate this later?" Hattori snapped. "It has friends."

And it did too. At the sound of the scream, several dozen Zombies of different shades and decay staggered out of the shadows, effectively pinning them against the wall behind them.

The Kid and Conan stepped back as Hakuba and Shin'ichi pulled out their weapons and clicked the safeties off. Hattori got a feral grin on his face and pulled out a katana.

"Where'd you hide the blade?" The Kid questioned, curious.

Hattori smirked. "You know where Heero Yuy hides his gun?" 

Conan shot the werewolf an incredulous look. "Don't tell me. Hammerspace."

The Kid raised an eyebrow. "I thought he had his gun shoved up his a-"

"-Ahem." Hakuba cleared his throat. "If you don't mind, we do have work to do here..."

Kid snorted. "Hey, Hakuba." He called, obviously less than impressed by the current situation. "Bet I can name more alcoholic drinks than you."

Hakuba shot him a glare.

"C'mon." The Kid wheedled. " _Sake_ to me."

"That's it. You must pay for the pun."

The English detective stepped forward and began to take shots at the incoming wave of moving dead bodies. 

"He drinks a whiskey drink *Blam!* He drinks a vodka drink *Blam!* He drinks a lager drink *Blam!* He drinks a Cider drink-" With a smooth motion, Hakuba released the clip he'd been firing from the gun. "He sings the songs that remind him of the good times-" He loaded a fresh clip "-He sings the songs that remind him of the better times." *Blam!*

He took a step back, giving Shin'ichi a chance to try to pick off some Zombies as well. "Is that what you meant, Kaitou-kun?"

"I didn't know you could sing." The thief admitted honestly, scratching his head. "Wow. You had to die to gain a sense of humour..."

"I don't think guns are going to be much help to us here." Shin'ichi commented, looking disgruntled as a Zombie he had just shot continued to move closer to them, regardless of the fact that it was now missing a large chunk of it's leg. "They just keep moving."

"Neither is cutting them." Hattori said with great disgust as he sliced and arm off, only to have the arm start to move independently of the body, creeping forward to grab him. He speared it with his katana, using the blade to toss it away.

"Hitting them in the brain does seems to work." Conan observed as one fell down and didn't move.

Hattori grunted, his attention obviously divided. "Yes, but do we have that many bullets?"

"Point."

"You're starting to get a little furry there, Hattori."

Hattori glared, his green eyes smouldering with barely repressed anger. He was filling out his jacket a bit better than he had before as well, especially in the shoulders. "Shut up. I know." 

" _Fuzzy navel_?" Kid inquired innocently.

"That's it. Hattori, don't give the Kid any more chocolate. I don't think his systems can handle it."

"Or ours." Conan added.

"Is fuzzy bad?" Hakuba asked with the air of someone who -knew- they wouldn't like the answer but had to ask anyway.

"Depends." Conan answered with a grin that just bordered on malicious.

"On?"

"Whose throat he rips out first." Shin'ichi smirked.

"Ah." Hakuba nodded. "Fuzzy = bad. Got it."

"Any body got any ideas before he starts ripping throats out?" The Kid ventured. "I can get out of here, but I don't know about you guys."

Hakuba eyed the thief thoughtfully. "I've got an idea." 

Conan raised an eyebrow, also eyeing the thief with a mischievous smirk. "Kid-kun, it's just your 'magic' that you're having problems with, correct?"

The Kid shrugged. "Now that I've had something to eat, yeah."

"Perfect." Shin'ichi grinned, putting his gun away. "On the count of three, everyone?"

Hattori looked slightly puzzled for a moment, then caught Shin'ichi's eye and grinned, sheathing his sword. "Works for me."

"Okay!" The Kid cheered, glad to have a plan of action. Then he caught the detectives' glances and his face fell as he caught on. "...no..."

"Just think of it as another game of 'Dog Pile on the Bandit'." Hakuba said almost cheerfully as the three larger detectives grabbed the thief and bodily picked him up. "Without the police officers."

"But I LIKE playing with the police officers..." The Kid whined as his feet left the ground.

"One..."

The Kid glared at the smugly smirking blond detective. "I'll get you for this, Hakuba."

"Two!"

"AAaaaaaahhh!"

"Fire in the hole!" Hattori shouted as they threw the Kid into the crowd of Zombies on 'Two', then took off running for the door on a silent 'Three'. The Kid let out an un-dignified squawk as he landed in the pile of Zombies, then started stepping on limbs, heads and what ever he could to stay on the top of what was rapidly becoming a classic free for all.

Hattori lead the charge, using his katana to cut a path through whatever limbs attempted to grab them. Conan took advantage of this by turning up the juice on his sneakers and using a hissing head as a soccer ball. 

"Hey you!" Conan sent the head into several other mobile corpses, which went down under the impact. "Out of the gene pool!"

"They're already dead." Shin'ichi pointed out, slowing down to keep his smaller self by his side.

"Yeah." The smaller twin admitted. "But I felt like saying it anyway."

"Fair enough."

"How's Kid doing?" Hakuba called.

Hattori opened the door for them, taking advantage of the pause to use his height to peer into the mass of moving bodies to look for the dark form of the thief. "He was hopping around a second ago..." He was forced to duck into the room when the horde turned their attention toward him, shutting the door just in time for the first wave to impact against it.

"Everybody intact?" Conan inquired, taking a moment to catch his breath after the sprint.

Hakuba glanced around the dark room. "Where's the Kid?" 

A small light burst into existence next to them. "Just waiting for you." The Kid's too cheerful voice said calmly as he held the Zippo lighter up for illumination. He was in one piece, no scratches or tears on him, and wasn't even winded. "What took you so long?"

The twins stared at him. "When did you-"

"How did you-"

The Kid waved a finger at them, clucking his tongue. "Ah-ah-ah. A magician never reveals his tricks. And Hakuba-chan... You really -must- learn that throwing things at people is not the best way to solve a conflict."

Hakuba blinked, a sardonic smile slowly forming on his lips. "Right..."

"Well, if we're all here..." Shin'ichi motioned towards the darkness. "Shall we go?"

The group nodded, and they silently began to stalk forward into the dark room, un-able to make out any details despite the light that the Kid held aloft as well as Conan's flashlight. It was if the darkness simply swallowed it up.

"I think I hear something." Hattori whispered in a hushed tone, turning his head from side to side as his pointed ears scanned for sounds. 

The others slowed their pace down, straining their senses as well. "Smell anything?" Conan inquired, casting his light about.

"Just rotting flesh."

Then the lights came on, momentarily blinding the group. Conan and Kid quickly extinguished their small lights, as they all blinked to clear their sight. And when they could they found... 

... a bigger crowd of Zombies than the room they had just left. Only these Zombies weren't staggering towards them, they were making strange little hops with their arms and claws outstretched, like large deranged rotting Easter Bunnies.

"Ever had one of those days when you feel like you're stuck in some sort of video game?" Hattori mused to himself as the un-dead began to move towards them. "Get out of one room, only to run into another room full of mindless drones you have to get past in order to get to the final Boss?"

"It could be worse!" Kid volunteered cheerfully.

Conan glared at him, shifting back to the relative safety of the group. "Don't you dare finish that line-" 

"-Zombies are bad enough." Shin'ichi muttered, moving so that the five of them were back to back to face their opponents. "I'm beginning to hate Zombies."

Hakuba winced.

"Actually, these aren't Zombies." Hattori helpfully offered.

"Oh, good."

"They're Kyonshi."

"Kyonshi?"

"Uh... Jiangshi?" Hattori tried again. "Chinese Hopping Vampire. Kind of like the Zombies, only stupider and slower. Downside, they're stronger. Oh, and you'll get turned into one if you get scratched or bit by one."

"Oh, goodie..."

"Well... that's one way of increasing your security system the easy way." Shin'ichi mused. "Get passed the Zombies, get turned into a Kyonshi."

"Not all of us." Hakuba said pointedly, coldly shooting an oncoming Kyonshi between the eyes. It kept hopping towards them, undaunted. While Hakuba wasn't exactly pleased with being a Zombie, he was getting rather tired of the disparaging comments. And he was pretty sure that he couldn't be turned un-dead again.

"Uh, no offense, Hakuba-kun." Shin'ichi quickly stammered.

"Okay, so how do we get rid of them?" Conan asked, glaring at his other half for his lack of tact. "Shooting them through the head doesn't seem to work very well."

"Physical attacks aren't going to work much, period." Hattori growled. "There's too many of them, and it takes a lot just to knock one over. What we need now is either a non-physical attack or one hell of a distraction."

All eyes turned to the Kid.

"My magic's all mangled, remember?" The Kid reminded them, raising an eyebrow. "Everything's coming out twisted."

"Twisted," Hakuba noted, eyeing the ever approaching Kyonshi with obvious distaste "May be exactly what we need right now."

The Kid sighed. "Alright. I'll give it a shot." He stepped forward, pulling a white silk top hat out of mid-air as he muttered about always being the one to end up fighting the dead guys. Reaching into the hat, he pulled out a light grey cape, the fabric swirling around him to finally settle around his shoulders. Gone was the teenage boy who had come to them for assistance, in his place was the cool, calm, legendary Phantom Thief.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" He shouted in accented English, drawing the hopping vampire's attention towards himself. "Boys and Ghouls of all decay! May I welcome you to Magic Kaito's Magic Show!"

He tossed his arms out wide, cards flying from his sleeves. The cards changed into ravens in mid-air, which swooped down to cause chaos among the Kyonshi ranks. The Kid took the hat off his head, reached in and pulled out something that looked like a cross between a small dragon and a large canine. What ever it was, it was big, mean and breathed fire. 

The Kid casually tossed it into the middle of the hopping horde, where it immediately turned several of them into ash before it went on to chase anything that dared to move within it's line of sight. 

"What the heck is THAT?!" Hattori gasped. 

The Kid put his hat back on his head. "That-" He informed them with a great deal of dignity "-Was a bunny rabbit. And I suggest that we leave before it turns it's attentions towards us, gentlemen."

Conan's eyebrows went up. "A bunny rabbit?!"

"Don't need to tell us twice." Shin'ichi spotted an opening in the now confused horde and ran for it.

"And who just commented about throwing things at people was not the best way to solve a conflict?" Hakuba wanted to know of the Kid.

"Oh, shut up."

"Don't tell me you're afraid of a bunny rabbit." Hattori teased Conan, who was eyeing the fire-breathing creature with not a small amount of trepidation. 

"I'm not." Conan glared. "But to that thing, I'm bite sized."

Keeping well clear of the creature, and un-distracted hopping Kyonshi, they made their way towards the only other exit in the room, a door on the far wall. As they approached, the Kid seemed to move slower and slower, a disturbed look on his face. Hattori noted, pausing them all just as they reached the doorway. "What's wrong?"

"I've got a bad feeling." Kid confessed. 

"We've all had a bad feeling since this whole thing started." Shin'ichi shrugged. "So?"

"What kind of bad feeling?" Hakuba asked, his concern evident.

"Uh... " The Kid looked somewhat nervous as he glanced at Hattori and the Twins. "Painful. Like when a heist is about to go really wrong."

Kudo snorted, obviously finding the idea laughable. "Anyone else getting anything?"

"We wouldn't." Hakuba terse reply drew Kudo up short. He began to look angry. The British Detective glared back. "We're not the ones who get shot at on a regular basis. We're the ones who shoot, remember?"

"He's got a point." Conan admitted. Kudo snorted, crossing his arms, but backed down.

"Any thing specific?" Hattori asked. "I'm not really getting anything myself."

The Kid shook his head. "Nope. It's just that... this would be a really convenient place for a trap."

Hattori and Conan nodded. "Got it." Hattori said solemnly. "Stick to the edges, don't lurk in the doorway?"

"Yeah." The thief looked more comfortable, having given a warning. "And be prepared to run really fast if something does go wrong."

"Understood." Hakuba nodded as they moved to the sides of the door, he reaching out to grab the knob. He glanced both ways. "Ready?"

They nodded back. 

He opened the door and stepped into a room that was vaguely lit, just bright enough to make out fuzzy dark shapes. They cautiously slunk in until they were all inside. 

"Looks like your spider-sense was wrong." Shin'ichi commented.

Two shadows shifted slightly. 

"Look out!" 

The shadows opened fire, the teenagers scattering as they dived for cover. Hakuba, Hattori and Shin'ichi dove one way, the Kid, acting much like a white shadow, grabbed Conan and rolled the other way. 

"You don't have to grab me like a sack of potatoes." Conan griped as the Kid set him down from where he had thrown him over his shoulder.

"Sorry." The Kid apologised, looking too distracted to be sincere. "I'll remember that next time."

"Next time?!" The small boy's voice whipped out sharp like a crack as he shot a death glare at the thief.

"Well, unless the next time you're about to get shot you'd like me just to stand there and dumbly watch, yes!" The Kid growled back, pressing his back up against the crates they were hiding behind as he attempted to spot where the rest of their group was. "Unless it's escaped your detection abilities, I do take offense to people getting hurt."

"I have noticed." Conan grumbled back. "Personally, I think it's a waste of your abilities to be on the wrong side of the law when you could be doing so much -good-."

"Yeah, well," The thief shrugged, obviously not interested into going into that at the moment. "As the great Lupin once said, 'when one cannot be a great artist or a great soldier, the only thing to be is a great thief'."

Conan raised an eyebrow. "You read the classics?"

"I read Holmes to find out if Hakuba's idol had that much of a stick up his butt." The Kid commented, his face edging out of the cover of the boxes they were hiding behind to peer at the dark men with guns. "The Lupin was worth learning French for, even if it makes my accent a little antique, nes pas?"

"If you're so smart-" Conan winced as a bullet kissed the wood of the top of the crate they were hiding behind, sending some chips of wood down on them "Then why the heck are you doing-"

"Something so stupid as being on the wrong side of the angels?" The Kid finished smoothly for him, fanning out a handful of cards and throwing them like miniature throwing knives at the gunslingers. "Wasn't exactly had planned out for my life, y'know. But you got to do what you got to do sometimes."

"True." Conan grunted, knowing that feeling. He hadn't exactly planned on getting shrunk either. 

"While we're on the subject of true confessions..." The Kid shot him a wink, crouching down as he tensed like a coiled spring. "You think you could tell your Dad sometime that the Kaitou Kid is a fan of his Night Baron books?"

"Really?" The question turned into a squeak as the Kid scooped him up under one arm and dashed into the shadows again, just before something hit the crate they had been hiding behind, causing it to explode.

Conan didn't have time to scream as they just seemed to -blur-, reappearing behind another crate where his other half, Heiji and Hakuba were hidden. 

"Miss us?" Kid asked, not even winded. 

"Always." Hakuba quipped dryly. The Kid scrunched up a face at him. The Kid blinked, noticing something strange about the English detective. "You've got holes."

Shin'ichi ignored them, focusing in his smaller twin. "You alright?" He demanded.

Hakuba glanced down, apparently just now noticing the bullet holes in the side of his body. "Oh, so I do."

"Peachy except for Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum over there." Conan motioned back at the 2 men in black.

"You're not bleeding either." The Kid continued, a look of vague disturbed awe passing over his features.

Hakuba shrugged. "It's just flesh wound."

"You've just been shot, you're not bleeding and you're quoting MONTY PYTHON?!" Kid was passed disturbed and on to outraged. "Jeez, if you weren't dead already, I'd kill you myself!"

"If you two are done with your lover's spat..." Hattori's blade flashed as he glared. "Does anyone have any ideas of what to do with dead and deader there?"

"Well, chances are at least one of them is responsible for those Zombies out there." Conan pointed out.

"Though which one it is, I haven't got a clue." Shin'ichi finished. He spared a glance towards the dark skinned boy. "Hattori? You getting anything?"

The werewolf shook his head. "Can't get a good enough scent. 'Neechan's better at sensing anyway."

"What about you, Hakuba?" The Kid asked, all sign of his previous irritation gone. 

Hakuba had a strangely perplexed expression on his face. "I am strangely drawn toward the hat."

"Hat?!"

"On the smaller mime." He motioned towards Vodka.

"Mime?!" Shin'ichi and Conan echoed in disbelief.

"Pale faces and black clothes, what else would you call them?" Hakuba snapped, sounding faintly exasperated. 

"Toast." Hattori grinned grimly. "Kudo, Hakuba, go long."

"Huh?" Neither of them caught the American football reference.

The Kid gave them a push. "Run."

That they got. They took off running, both keeping low to avoid the spray of bullets from Gin, and Kudo casually keeping the un-dead Hakuba between him and the 'mimes'. 

The thief took offense to Gin shooting at the people if they were not quite his friends, they at least his co-conspirators in this matter. He pulled off his hat and reached inside. 

"Not another bunny rabbit..." Conan muttered, moving to Hattori's far side, away from the crazy magician. 

It wasn't. Dark multi-coloured rounds spheres floated out instead, flying towards Gin. They looked like they might have been balloons at one time, that is if balloons came with large mouths full of jagged teeth, wiggling tendrils and exploded when shot.

"What's your plan, anyway?" He asked casually, ducking back down as the balloons swarmed the men in black.

"Well, while you're taking care of defense..." Hattori grinned cheerfully, casually picking up Conan. "Why don't we take care of the offense?!" 

"Hattori?" Conan asked warily, just before the Osaka boy tossed him high up into the air like a football. "HATTORIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"

Biting off the scream of surprise with a brief epitaph for Hattori's mistreatment of him, Conan took advantage of the sudden increase in height to pull out the Kid's card gun and aim it at the stoically standing Vodka's head. 

Vodka's attention was on the strangely attacking balloons instead of the small flying boy. Just as gravity re-asserted it's self on Conan's slight body, he fired the card gun. 

Two cards shot through the air, cleanly slicing Vodka's hat in half. 

And there was a brief silence.

Then the scraps of fabric that had been the hat started to drift towards the ground.

Shin'ichi scrambled to catch Conan, wrapping his arms around the small boy even as the momentum sent him stumbling backwards. He crashed into Hakuba, sending the three of them down in a tangled heap on the ground, Conan safely held on top.

"And the kid wins the game!" The Kid grinned, holding his hands up in a classic 'goal' pose.

Gin fell to the ground with a meaty thud as well, then almost seemed to melt into the floor as his body reduced itself to ashes in a matter of seconds, leaving behind a pile of bland ashes and a black trench coat and hat. 

Hattori summed it up for them in one word. "Ew."

"Aniki..." Vodka stared at the crumpled outline of his partner, his face pale and clammy looking. He began to move towards the fallen Black Ops member, only to pitch forward, landing face down on the ground about a hand space away from his goal. 

Conan looked up from the targeting lens on his wristwatch dart. "Whew."

"Oi, Hakuba?" The Kid called, his voice un-certain on who he was expecting to reply back. "You dead?"

"I'm still here!" The blond detective called back, his voice sounding muffled. "Though if Kudo doesn't get his scrawny self off of me, that may change!"

Kudo grumbled and climbed to his feet, releasing his smaller self in the process. Hakuba shot him a baleful glare, smoothing out the wrinkles on his jacket. "Thank you."

"Thank you, actually." Conan shot him a grin. 

Hakuba waved it off in favour of getting upright again. 

"How's Vodka?" Shin'ichi asked as Hattori leaned down to check on the stocky man.

"Think he's going to suffer from an energy backlash for a while." Hattori said seriously. "He'll probably sleep for quite a while, even with out the dart."

"Heh." Conan grinned.

"We should probably call Inspector Megure and leave an anonymous tip." Shin'ichi sighed, rubbing the back of his head in a weary gesture. "Can I-"

Conan handed him the bow tie changer without a word.

"Speaking of cleaning up..." The Kid put two fingers to his mouth and whistled, a long high-pitched noise. 

"What are you calling?" Hakuba asked suspiciously.

A mischievous grin was his only answer.

Until a large black shadow came galloping towards them, the dark creature's mouth open and bits of flame flickering from it.

"It's the bunny rabbit!" Conan panicked, darting behind his other self, who was dialling a number on his cell phone. 

The Kid, on the other hand, was completely calm about it. He took off his top hat and held under his arm on one side. The creature leapt for it, disappearing into the hat, regardless of the fact that it shouldn't have been able to fit its head inside, much less its whole body.

He turned the hat towards them so that they could see for themselves that the hat was empty, turned it upside down and gave it a few shakes to make sure nothing fell out, then turned it right-side up again and reached his hand down inside.

And pulled out something that was the same size and shape of a black cat. Only with bat wings and a row of spikes going down it's back. 

"Well, my magic's not completely back to normal, so it'll have to do." The Kid commented with a slightly rueful tone as he put his hat back on his head. He held the cat creature out toward Hakuba. "What do you think, Hakuba? Think Akako-chan would like a dark creepy pet of the netherworld with a carrot fetish?"

The cat murrr-ed in response.

"Just as long as I'm not there." Was all Hakuba had to say about it.

"One thing I don't understand..." Hattori mused out loud. "We're down a bad guy. We got the two that Hakuba saw, but what about the one that bit the-"

"Look out!" Conan shouted, catching sight of another shadow out of the corner of his eye. 

His warning came a fraction too late. There was a sudden rush of darkness and the five boys quickly lost consciousness.

//Ö\\\

To be concluded in Part Three. Or so we hope...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick Notes:
> 
> The girls chat at the beginning was largely inspired by Yaoi-Con. Fortunately, they're not speaking Fangirl, which is easy to speak, slightly hard to understand, but extremely difficult to type.
> 
> Sake to me = Sock it to me. An old joke out of the 70s.
> 
> Hakuba's singing 'Tubthumping' by Chubma Wumba. Fun song. 
> 
> Screaming Red Zombie, Screaming Orgasm and Fuzzy Navel are all names of alcoholic mixed drinks.  
> Original idea was to have alcoholic drink puns throughout the fight sequence, but it kind of fell through, due to the fact I don't drink, therefore don't have an extensive enough knowledge of drinks to pull it off. Ah, well.


	3. Night Dreams 3

After today the following expression will no longer strike you as being in the least bit amusing: "Friends help friends move. Real friends help friends move bodies."  
-humorscope.com

//Ö\\\

"There's a bird outside the window." Aoko said, looking somewhat disturbed. 

"Yeah." Ran smiled fondly, not looking. "There are a lot of birds around here."

"Holding a letter?" Aoko ventured, tilting her head to the side in bafflement.

"WHAT?!" Both Ran and Kazuha jumped out of their chairs to leap towards the window.

A raven looked at them, tilting its head. A folded piece of paper was in its beak. It blinked, then launched itself off the branch it was perched on and flew towards them. The girls backed up a step as it touched down on the window ledge long enough to drop the note, then took off into the night sky, making a loud cackling sound.

Ran looked at the piece of paper. "It's a note."

"Well, obviously." Kazuha growled. In her experience, large black ravens swooping down to drop off notes were not a good thing. 

"What's it say?" Aoko asked, peeking over their shoulders. 

Ran picked it up and gave it a glance over before responding. "Shin'ichi, Conan-kun, Hattori-kun and Kaito-kun have been captured." Ran read slowly, making sure that her eyes weren't deceiving her. "There's an address if we'd like to go rescue them."

"Ooo..." Kazuha scowled. "Boys. Always getting themselves in trouble."

"We'd better call the police." Aoko sighed. 

Ran cleared her throat. "By ourselves, it says. Girls only."

"Girls only?" Kazuha echoed, crossing her arms. "It's most likely a trap."

"Well, what else can we do?" Ran demanded back.

Aoko paused a minute. "I think I may know someone who might like to come. May I borrow your phone?"

"Of course." Ran assured her. "It's in the hall."

"Thanks." Aoko paused to pick up the mop Kaito had given her, which she had left beside the chair, went into the hall and dialled a number.

"Hello, Akako-chan? Do you need some more bunnies?"

 

.................................//Ö\\\\...

 

"Ow." Conan rolled his head back as he woke up and made a hiss of pain. "Very ow."

"You okay?" Hattori's concerned voice asked from his right side. 

"Define 'okay'." He grumbled, squinting his eyes in an effort to see. "Where are we?"

"Some sort of factory, it appears." Shin'ichi's voice commented from his left. "I was starting to get worried, you weren't waking up."

"I told you the gas probably hit his smaller form harder." Hattori commented. 

"Yeah, then explain -them-." Shin'ichi retorted.

"Them?" Conan looked around, then realised that he was attached to a wall via straps around his wrists, ankles and torso. To his right was a sulking furry Hattori. On his right was his larger half. When he strained his neck to look past Shin'ichi, he could see a passed out Kaitou Kid, still wearing his top hat and monocle, and Hakuba both fastened to the wall as well. "How long have we been out of it?"

"I've been up for about 15 minutes, I think." Hattori supplied helpfully. "Kudo just woke up a few minutes ago, and now you. Don't know how long it's been other than that. Neither of us have been able to break the straps or wiggle free, but you're welcome to try."

Hattori's faster werewolf metabolism would cycle anything through his system faster, Conan noted as he methodically tested his bonds. But it didn't explain the half-vampire or the zombie continued sleep. "Maybe it was geared more for the un-dead than the living?" He supplied.

As if on cue, both Kid and Hakuba's eyes opened and they lifted up their heads. 

"-Or not."

"Geh." The Kid groaned. "Feels like Nakamori-keibu and his men are playing 'Dogpile the Bandit' on my BRAIN..." 

Hakuba muttered something un-printable in English before clearing his throat. "Where are we?" He asked. 

"Factory." Hattori volunteered. "We're just hanging around."

"He's bad enough, thank you." Hakuba retorted. "We don't need jokes from the peanut gallery."

The werewolf made a face back. Humour was while the Kid glared at his rival. "Oh, bite me." 

"Isn't that what started this whole mess?" Conan pointed out.

Any further retorts were stopped when a smooth voice replied from the shadows below them. "Very true."

Light-hearted jabs were gone in a flash, replaced by hard eyed game faces. A smirking figure dressed in black stepped out into the ring of light they were under. Conan and Shin'ichi stiffened in recognition. "Vermouth."

"Vermouth, huh?" Kid looked at the Vampire with obvious disdain. "What is it with you guys and alcoholic drinks? Do you have to be very drunk to join or something?"

He obliviously ignored the irony of that statement.

The blonde Vampire smiled sweetly back at him. "Remind me to have your tongue cut out later."

"It wouldn't work." Conan shook his head. "He'd still probably find some way to annoy you."

The other detectives nodded in agreement.

"Fine." Vermouth pulled something off of a nearby crate and walked over to the Kid, taking care of the thief's smart mouth the old-fashioned way.

By putting a strip of duct tape across his mouth.

"Thanks." Hakuba looked vaguely relived at the magician-thief's silence. The blonde woman looked pretty pleased with herself as well as she rested her hands on her hips, smirking at the boys. "Now, if we could get down to business..."

 

.......//Ö\\\\..................

Kazuha, Ran and Aoko met a long dark haired girl dressed in a very tight, very revealing, very form-fitting outfit about a block from the address they were instructed to meet. 

"Akako-chan!" Aoko grinned, waving. "Glad you could make it."

"Nakamori." Akako nodded aloofly. She noted the mop the wild haired girl was carrying over one shoulder like a bokken at rest. "I see you're armed."

Aoko grinned. "Ran-chan, Kazuha-chan, this is Koizumi Akako. She likes bunnies." 

"Pleased to meet you..." Kazuha and Ran pulled up short. "Bunnies?" They chorused in confusion.

"All sorts of small animals, really." Akako flipped some hair back over her shoulder, the snakes on her shoulder armour ducking to avoid being entangled. "Rabbits just usually happen to be convenient."

"I see...." Ran and Kazuha exchanged worried looks. 

"It's better not to ask." Aoko supplied cheerfully. "Shall we go?"

"Certainly."

 

.................//Ö\\\\....................

 

The Kid looked irritated enough to fry an egg on his head. 

In fact, he started steaming.

Literally.

Fine white wisps of smoke rose from the Kid's cape and coat, slowly building up into a semi-transparent cloud.

"Oi! No smoking here!" Vermouth snapped, irritated at the continued interruption. "Stop that!"

"I didn't know he had a smoking jacket." Hattori quipped, flashing a toothy grin. The twins glared at him for the pun. He shrugged back. When things got serious, sometimes the best defense was humour.

Despite their captor's protests, the cloud only grew thicker, encompassing both the thief and the blond detective next to him.

Then as quickly as it appeared, it faded away. 

To reveal a furious Hakuba bound and gagged with a stripe of duct tape where the Kid had a few minutes before. The Kid now hung in Hakuba's place.

"Well, that was a lame escape." Kudo commented.

The Kid glared. "Like you're doing any better. Oi, Techie boy! Your cuff links don't happen to turn into saw blades or something, do they?"

Conan sighed. If he had anything that would have worked, he would have done it before Vermouth showed up. "Told you he'd find another way to annoy you." He informed Vermouth.

"That's true." She nodded. "If we weren't so interested in acquiring his skills, it'd probably be a lot easier just dispose of him now. But then we'd miss all the fun."

"You call this fun?" Shin'ichi inquired.

"Depends on where you are." Vermouth smirked. She was having a marvellous time. It wasn't every day that she had such fine specimens of young men hanging around for decoration. All she needed was some extra large picture frames and she'd be set.

The boys sweatdropped.

..//Ö\\\\..................

"You sure this is the right place?" Aoko asked, looking around the darken room with a bit of trepidation.

The lights clicked on, momentarily blinding them. When they could see again, they looked around to see a large room filled with a bunch of scary looking pale-faced people wearing dark clothing standing around. Most of them appeared to be sporting fashionably bloody bite marks on their necks, wrists and other assorted places on their bodies. 

There was a slight pause as groups stared at each other.

Then the said group of scary pale-faced people wearing dark clothing and bite marks screamed and ran towards the quartet of girls. 

The girls did the logical thing when confronted by a large group of scary people coming towards them.

Screamed at the top of their lungs and charged right back towards them.

Okay, maybe it wasn't the sanest thing to do, but they, like their currently bound male counterparts, weren't exactly known for their common sense. 

But they were less than pleased at their boyfriends/childhood friends/undefined/whatever being captured and burning off a little steam looked like a good idea. 

Ran attacked the mass of people like a raging tiger, striking and kicking anyone who dared to get close enough, Kazuha following. The Osaka girl's style wasn't as fierce as her friends, but it was equally effective as she flowed through the crowd like water. 

What Aoko lacked in style and grace, she more than made up for in sheer power and temper. Cursing a blue streak, she attacked anyone crazy enough to think that she was an easy target with a glare hard enough to crush metal, an alarming vocabulary of curse words and her chosen weapon, a mop.

Akako didn't bother breaking a sweat in her defense as she calmly walked through the room, sprinkling a fine sparkling pink powder as she went, happily humming a soft tune to herself and smiling beatifically. With the occasional pause for gleeful maniacal laughter, of course. 

And everywhere she went, she left behind a trail of bunnies.

Gun bunnies, playing bunnies, honey bunnies, Easter bunnies, dust bunnies, chocolate bunnies, every sort of bunny imaginable.

The fight, if you could call it that, was over before the girl's opponents knew it even began.

In short, the guys may have been the brains of the operation, but the girls were most definitely the butt-kickers.

 

.............................................//Ö\\\

 

"The thing I don't understand is why did they attack Hakuba in the first place." Kid commented towards the woman below. "He didn't even know about the organization until you killed him."

"You know, for someone you don't speak all that highly of, you sure do seem to be concerned about him." Hattori smirked.

"Oh, I'm not." Kid said breezily. "But he's been following me for so long now, I start to wonder about him when he's not there. Kind of like a little lost puppy that follows you everywhere."

Hakuba protested being called 'a little lost puppy'. At least he would have, if they duct tape hadn't been across his mouth. He settled for an 'As-soon-as-I-get-my-hands-on-you-I'm-going-to-wring-your-scrawny-little-neck' glare instead. The Kid merely grinned and winked back.

Vermouth snickered. "Actually, it's a very amusing little story, all things considered. My subordinates mistook him for someone else."

There was a fraction of a pause before both Shin'ichi and Conan started snickering. 

"You..." Shin'ichi hooted "You thought-"

"-he was SHERRY?!"

The twins howled with laughter. Both Hattori and the Kid looked confused. "I don't get it."

The Vampire's lips twitched. "Sherry is female."

Hattori started snickering as the thief turned toward the blond detective, his eyes wide in a combination of amazement and humour. "They thought you were a GIRL?!" The Kid's bell like laughter ran out.

Hakuba sighed. It wasn't enough that they killed him and turned him to some sort of un-dead creature of the night, noooo. They had to gag him, tie him up and make fun of him too. 

Right now in his opinion, life, and Vampires in general, sucked.

 

..........//Ö\\\\........

 

The girls burst into the room with an unintentional dramatic entrance, the door making a loud bell like sound as it struck the wall with a great amount of force, the girls posing in the doorway, the room filled with sprawled unconscious bodies behind them backlighting them. 

"Oi!" Kazuha shouted, striding as if she were in charge of the place, the other girls following. "We're here to rescue our friends!" Kazuha snapped, pointing a finger at Vermouth. "And you can't stop us!"

Ran firmly backed up that statement, with a glare that could have scourced steel. Akako seemed almost amused.

"Wait!" Aoko looked at the imprisoned boys in confusion. "That's not -my- Kaito!"

"Huh?" That effectively brought the dramatic build up to a halt. 

"It's -A- Kaitou," Aoko explained "But it's not -MY- Kaito."

Hakuba and Akako sweatdropped. Sometimes the Inspector's daughter was just a bit too dense.

"Well, if you don't want him, then I'll take him." Akako cheerfully volunteered.

"I think you're pretty much screwed." Hattori casually informed the thief.

Kid sweatdropped. "Ye-ah."

"Oh, Kid-kun!" Ran waved "Nice to meet you again!"

The thief smiled and cheerfully waved back, at least as much as he was able to with his wrists pinned against the wall. "Like wise, Ran-san. I do apologise for knocking you out and taking your appearance back on the boat. And knocking you out at the Magic Lover Club meeting."

"-Don't forget masquerading as her father." Conan helpfully supplied.

"It's okay!" Ran chirped. "You were very nice about it. But please don't be too alarmed if I hit you later."

"Not a problem." The Kid agreed earnestly. "Please don't be offended if I dodge."

"Of course."

The Kid smiled and motioned to Shin'ichi. "Hey, Kudo! Your girlfriend is really nice. Why can't you be more like her?"

"She's not my... oh, never mind." Kudo sighed, wondering if it would be acceptable to hit his head against the wall. "What do you want with them anyway?" He demanded, turning an angry eye at Vermouth. "The girls have nothing to do with this!"

Vermouth smirked. "An eye for an eye, Cool Guy. But not to worry, -I- won't harm a hair on our Angel's head."

If anything, that put them even more on guard. Vermouth grinned and caught the Kid's eye.

The thief jerked as if he'd been shocked, his eyes fading from the red-violet they had slowly been changing into back to the glowing ruby red he had first met them with. With a quick twist of his wrists, he slipped from his bonds and landed on the floor in a cat-like crouch, then abruptly appeared to disappeared. 

"However, being able to control anyone with my blood in them is a useful trick to have." The blonde woman smirked, flashing a bit of fang.

"You're the one who bit the Kid!" Kazuha exclaimed. 

"Very good." Vermouth's grin turned amused. "Now the question is, will you find him before he gets to you?"

And the lights when out. The only thing illuminating the room was the half moon outside of the small windows on the tops of the walls.

That put the girls on edge. With the exception of Akako, who didn't seem to have any sort of sense of fear as she pulled out a broom, daintly sat down on it and floated up next to Hakuba's head. The remaining girls cast about for any signs of movement.

Hattori spotted him first. "Aoko! Look out!"

"Huh?" Aoko spun, the mop over one shoulder swinging around to slam into the side of the Kid's head. The Kid went flying, sailing out of her sight. "What?"

There were several sweatdrops, despite the serious nature of the atmosphere.

The fledgling Vampire was more that a little miffed about losing his prey, and took it up with the source of his disappointment, jumping up to cling over Hattori, snarling in his face.

Hattori snarled back, his lips and nose losing definition as they extended out into a short muzzle, his green eyes flickering a dangerous yellow. The Kid wasn't amused, biting down on Hattori's shoulder, causing the werewolf to scream in a mixture of outrage and pain. 

"HEIJI!" Kazuha screamed, running towards her friend. Ran swung an arm out in attempt to stop her friend from getting hurt too. 

"Get off of him!" Conan scolded. "Sit! Bad Vampire! Bad!"

The Kid's reaction was unexpected. His face curled up in disgust as he then turned around and spat the blood out, grimacing. Werewolf blood obviously didn't agree with his palette.

"Sorry to taste bad." Hattori growled, one leg breaking free of the cuff that held it down and he lashed out at the lithe thief. The Kid twisted to avoid the kick, and Hattori hit his pocket instead. 

Playing cards flew out, floating to the ground like oversized confetti.

The Kid followed them down, grumbling to himself and picking up the fallen cards.

"Why's he playing fifty-two card pickup?" Shin'ichi asked, puzzled as Hattori began straining at his other bonds in attempt to break free.

"Vampires are very anal retentive." Kazuha helpfully explained. 

Conan peered down at the mix of cards scattered on the ground. "Playing Cards, Duel Monsters, Pocket Monsters, Digital Monsters... Wow, he really does have a lot of different kinds of cards."

Kid said nothing, shuffling up some 'Vampire: The Masquerade' cards into his hands.

Hattori snarled triumphantly as he broke free, both the straps holding him to the wall as well as most of his clothes being torn to bits as a large wolf-dog-human hybrid hit the ground, snarling. 

Both Shin'ichi and Conan swore. This was not good.

"Oh, I remember this..." Hakuba mused out loud, nodding. "Fuzzy = bad."

The Kid's head snapped up at the sound, baring his smaller fangs at the werewolf as he scooped up the last of the cards and vanished into the darkness again. 

"Ran-chan! Aoko-chan!" Kazuha motioned for the girls to follow her as she ran to the wall the guys were hanging around at. 

"What are you doing?!" Shin'ichi demanded.

"You guys are sitting ducks." The Osaka girl snapped back. "And at least this way, we have at least one direction they can't attack us from."

"Heiji-kun?" Aoko asked, her voice wavering a bit. She'd never seen him transform before, much less known about his curse.

Kazuha put a brief comforting hand on her arm. "It's okay. We'll explain later." If there was a later, she added silently. She wasn't quite sure if Hattori would attack them like this or not... he'd only transformed a couple of times, less severe than this. And he'd never been injured before.

In the mean time, Akako had pulled out a box of chocolate covered cherries and nibbled on them as she floated next to Hakuba's head. 

"Want a bite?" She offered as she watched the drama below with a vaguely interested expression.

He shot her a glare. "I don't eat."

"Such a pity." She popped a cherry in her mouth.

"You're enjoying yourself way to much, you know that?" Hakuba deadpanned.

She shrugged. "They just asked if I wanted more bunnies. My work here is done."

He sighed and shook his head. "What is it with you and rabbits anyway?"

Akako grinned ferally. "I like bunnies." She ate another cherry. "-In soup."

Hakuba sweatdropped.

"Ran!" Conan called to the girl below him. He squirmed for a moment, then a silvery object fell from under his coat. Ran caught it.

"Conan-kun? What are you doing with a gun?!"

"It's the Kid's." Shin'ichi explained, his own weapon thankfully out of sight. 

Ran looked at the gun helplessly. "What do you want me to do with it?"

Aoko sighed, rolling her eyes. "Give me that." The shorthaired girl grabbed the gun, trading her for the mop. She gave the gun a cursory inspection, then nodded. "Alright. Where are they?"

"I can't see them." Kazuha complained. All around them was darkness, no sign of the vampires or the werewolf. "Guys?"

"Nothing." Shin'ichi reported. Conan grit his teeth in frustration. If he could get to his glasses, he could use the night vision built in. And since no one other than his other self knew about them, he couldn't just pass them on for someone else to use.

"Ran?" Kazuha asked. "Picking up on anything strange?"

Ran closed her eyes, concentrating. She still wasn't completely sure how she was able to sometimes sense things that weren't there, but if it could help them out, she wasn't going to argue about it. 

Silently, she pointed. 

Aoko smoothly turned and fired several cards. The musical sound of the cards hitting metal rang out, then faded. Aoko snarled silently, straining her ears to hear. 

The Kid came rushing out the darkness from the opposite direction, glided past Kazuha like she wasn't there and leaped for Aoko. Aoko spun, attempting to fire several shots off at the Kid. 

The cards whipped around him, some slicing past his cape, others getting imbedded in his hat, pushing it of his head. Something in the background creaked and fell resulting a tremendous crash that shook the walls and caused everything to shake.

Aoko screamed, blindly scrambling to reach behind her and grab the mop back from Ran as the Kid reached for her. Ran handed it to her and she brought the mop up to block. When the new didn't work, it was time for the tried and true.

The Kid hit the mop chest first, a small black bag on a thin cut cord around his neck pressing against Aoko's bare hands. He screamed as he was suddenly repelled with great force, flying backwards back into the shadows. 

Ran, Aoko, Shin'ichi and Conan stared. "What was THAT?!" Conan demanded.

Kazuha blushed faintly. "Well, um... Heiji asked me to make two omamori, one for the Kid and one for Aoko-chan. The Kid seemed kinda worried about hurting Aoko-chan, so I sort of added some small protection charms to her omamori to make sure he couldn't..."

"I'd say they worked..." Shin'ichi whistled.

The Kid suddenly re-appeared, running towards them at top speed. "AAHHHHHH!!" He screamed, jumping past them to flip up onto Akako's broom and perch like a gargoyle on the bristle part of the broom. Heiji the werewolf followed, barking and jumping up to snap at the thief's heels. 

"Bad doggie! Go away, doggie! Ohhh, what did I ever do to you?" Kid comically bemoaned as Hattori managed to grab one of his loafers with his teeth and yank it off the thief's foot. Akako raised an eyebrow, floating the broom just a little bit higher so that her ankles didn't get nipped at too.

"I'd say he's back to normal." Hakuba smirked as Hattori shook the white shoe like a rag doll before proceeding to gnaw on it, glaring cheerfully at the Kid the whole time.

"That's my shoe, you mangy mutt!" Kid shook his fist at the werewolf, nearly falling off the broom as he did so.

"Heiji!" Kazuha whistled. "C'mere, Heiji!" 

The werewolf turned and trotted over to Kazuha, proudly holding on to his 'prize' with a very self-satisfied expression. Kazuha knelt down and dug her fingers into his ruff, murmuring at him the entire time as he leaned against her, nearly knocking her over with his weight. 

"Your boyfriend is a dog?" Aoko puzzled, idly aiming the gun in the Kid's direction.

"Not always." 

Ran looked around. "Where is Vermouth?"

"Allow me to shed some light on that subject." Akako whispered some words into her cupped hands, then tossed a spark of light into the air. It grew until it was about the size of a soccer ball, illuminating the room as well as the previous fluorescent bulbs had. 

Lying off to one side, they were able to see what had been the source of the crash while the Kid had attacked Aoko.

A giant anvil lay embedded in the ground, a pair of legs sticking out of it in much the same manner of the former Wicked Witch of the East from the Wizard of Oz. 

"Ding dong, the witch is dead." Conan dryly quipped. Ran glared at him for the comment. Shin'ichi grinned.

"An ANVIL?!" Kazuha exclaimed.

"So it would appear." Hakuba helpfully agreed.

"Yes, but an -anvil-?!"

"Well..." The Kid glanced around. "This would be an anvil factory."

The detectives and the girls looked around, verifying this fact with their own eyes. "Oh. So it is."

"What is an anvil factory doing in Tokyo?" The completely confused Kazuha wanted to know.

"Does it matter?"

"Oh."

A soft chuckle from the shadows caused them to jump and go on guard again. "As entertaining as this all is..." A small shadow stepped forward, into the light, pale blond hair shining like a halo around her head. 

"Haibara?!" The twins exclaimed, surprised. She shot them a small smirk.

"... You might want to consider leaving now." The blond scientist continued. "Your fight wasn't exactly quiet, and there are certain facts-" She gave a pointed look to the Kid still sitting on Akako's floating broom and Wolf-Hattori, who had the thief's shoe pinned between 2 paws so he could chew on it easier. "-that you might not want to explain to the police."

Kid nodded. "Yeah." He and cops didn't exactly get along.

Aoko smirked, pointedly pointing the card gun at the thief. "Speaking of leaving..."

"My cue to go!" The Kid said quickly. A quick flash of smoke appeared where he had been resting, and he was gone.

The Inspector's daughter fired in a futile attempt to hit the Kaitou, and a bouquet of red and white roses burst out of the gun. "Dammit!" She swore, letting loose with a stream of curse words that left Ran blushing and Wolf-Hattori grinning broadly.

"Where did you learn to handle a gun like that?" Shin'ichi asked, ignoring the curses. "Aren't you a bit underage?" 

Conan smirked, not bothering to mention that both he and his older self were also both proficient with the weapon.

Aoko shrugged. "When Mom..." She trailed off and started again. "Dad figured that if he was going to be raising a small child by himself and with his hours, he figured that the best way for me to know that a gun is not a toy was for me to learn how to use one."

"You've been firing guns since you were a child?!" Ran stared at the wild haired girl in shock.

"Of course not." Aoko dismissed the comment. "First thing he taught me was how they worked, how to take them apart and put them together again. It's only been the past couple of years that I've developed the arm strength to shoot anything worthwhile."

The Kansai couple sweatdropped and laughed nervously as the Tokyo natives stared. Kaito's girl was a gun bunny.

Ai tilted her head to the side. "Shall we go?"

"Right." Shin'ichi offered his arm to Ran. "Shall we?"

She looped an arm through his. "Certainly." They strolled out the door, the Osaka pair and a still darkly muttering Aoko following. Hakuba and Akako brought up the rear.

Conan turned and looked at Ai, who was smiling innocently, her hands behind her back. "Bolt cutters?" He questioned.

She pulled the pair she'd been holding behind her back out into the light, a teasing smirk on her face. "Are you sure you want to know?" 

He paused, then sighed, shaking his head. It really didn't matter after all. "I think we'd better catch up with the others."

"Good idea." She agreed, following the others out the door. He sighed again, sticking his hands in his pockets and following. He was -never- going to understand her... 

The group collectively paused as they reached the door leading to where the girls had fought the ghouls. A figure in dark clothes leaned against the wall, looking at something in the room. 

"Kaito?" Aoko blinked, then walked up to her friend, looking puzzled. "What are you doing here?"

"You know me." He shrugged gamely, his violet-red eyes shooting the detectives a guarded look. "Always following the Kid around."

"Like a lawyer after an ambulance." Hakuba agreed.

The Kid, dressed once more in his over-sized dark clothes and sunglasses, motioned farther into the room. "The Cat really likes bunnies." He commented off-handily.

"Cat?" 

The thief pointed. More than half the bunnies that had filled the room when the girls had left it were gone. The rest were a trembling fuzzy mass backed up against one wall, the small form of the black winged kitten prowling in front of them.

"Kawaii!" Akako not quite squealed as she bounced. "Here, kitty!"

The cat looked at her, sized her up for a minute, and then padded over to the dark sorceress. Akako looked delighted and picked the furry creature up, scratching it behind the ears. The winged cat purred at the attention.

"I think he likes you." Kid smirked. 

"Really?" Akako smiled, turning to the cat. "Want to come home with me?"

The cat burped, a small wisp of fire shooting from its mouth as it did so.

"It's a match made in heaven." Hakuba deadpanned, obviously meaning the other direction.

Shin'ichi coughed earning him an elbow in the gut from Ran. "We all here again?" He asked.

"Yup." Conan agreed, walking along side wolf-Hattori and Kazuha. His larger self smiled. 

Ai reached up and poked Hakuba on the side.

"When we get back, I'm going to need to you to strip for me again." She informed him. 

Hakuba sweatdropped as the guys hid snickers from the girls.

 

...........//Ö\\\\.............

 

Ai stepped out of her laboratory, looking solemn. Everyone lounged around the room in various degrees of relaxation and stress. The girls were there as well, some of the time taken up filling them in on the past night's events. "I've got some bad news, and some good news." She announced.

The group fell silent. Except for the Kid, who was in a much chipper mood now that he knew he wasn't going to turn into a bloodsucker. "Don't you mean some good news and some bad news?" He questioned.

She gave him a flat look. "It depends on your perspective."

"Oh."

The miniature scientist snorted, looking amused. "Fine. The -news-, as it were was, is that his-" A thumb was jerked in Kid's direction, they were pointedly not mentioning him by name. "-magic trick truly did backfire. Instead of merely severing the connection, and thus the spells between the detective and the castor, it re-assigned a different energy source to fuel the spells."

"Meaning?" Shin'ichi questioned.

"It is the his magical abilities that is currently keeping Hakuba-san 'alive'."

"So... he's is like... Hakuba's 'Master' now?" Hattori mused out loud. He was still very furry and wolfish looking, but looking pretty pleased with himself as he perched on a stool, dressed in a pair of borrowed sweatpants. 

"Master?" The Kid looked at the detective in disbelief. "Does this mean you have to do anything I tell you to now?"

Hakuba glowered. "Not a chance." 

The Kid's disbelief quickly faded into look of pure devilment. "Really-?" With a snap of his wrists, a black and white maids outfit, complete with puffed sleeves and ruffled apron, appeared in his hands (Which was a shame, he'd been aiming for a French maid's outfit, but his magic was still a bit off). "I've got a few things that could use some cleaning, Saguru-chan..."

The English Detective blanched and backed up a step. "You're kidding."

A wide grin across the Kid's face was his only answer.

Hakuba's nerve broke and he ran. 

"Wait up, Saguru-chaaaaaan!" Kid merrily sang, chasing after Hakuba as he waved the dress around like a battle flag. "I'm sure this'll fit you perfectly!"

A laughing Kazuha and Ran kept Aoko from pulling out her mop and chasing after them while the detectives and the scientist watched the two run around the room with an air of detached amusement. "Bets?" Conan offered.

"Oh, I'm sure he'll tell Hakuba that's he joking." Hattori smirked. "After he's got the dress on him."

Shin'ichi sighed ruefully. "And me without my camera..."

Ai smirked. "I've getting this on tape."

 

//Ö\\\\.........................................

 

The next morning, long after Hakuba had finally found the door out of the lab and had exited it, the laughing thief on his heels, the Kudo residence once again received a visitor.

This time however, the Kid knocked on the kitchen door, seeing as both twins and Hattori were currently devouring breakfast with the voracious appetites that all teenagers have. Shin'ichi opened the door to find the Kid, dressed in black once more, standing there awkwardly. "Hi."

"Hi." Shin'ichi deadpanned back. 

"I figured I should drop by and say hello, save you the trouble of tracking me down and all."

"Good idea!" Hattori piped up, waving the remains of a very chewed on familiar white loafer. "I'm -keeping- this!" He grinned.

The thief shot Hattori a slightly sour look. 

"Come on in." Shin'ichi waved the thief in, smoothly heading back to his own meal waiting for him at the table. 

"Thanks." Kid stepped in, slipping his shoes off and shutting the door behind him. He took a seat on a stool next to one of the counters, out of reach from the table.

They sat around in apprehensive silence for several minutes, each waiting for the others to start talking. 

"So, what's up?" Conan broke the silence with his high child's voice.

The Kid chuckled nervously, running a hand through his unruly hair. "Well, first off, thanks for letting me head home last night. You could have just shipped me of to the cops, so thanks."

Hattori waved it off. "Don't worry about it. How's Hakuba doing?"

"As well as can be expected." The Kid shrugged. "We made a deal. He doesn't mention what he thinks he knows about me and I don't use him as a life-sized marionette. And in the unlikely case that I flub up and he catches me legitimately, he has to come and visit me in jail occasionally so we can trade snarky barbs through the bars. Neither of us is exactly -happy- over the whole deal, but we'll live. Or not, in his case. You know. Whatever..." He trailed off uncertainly, his eyes darting around the kitchen like he was half expecting armed guards to suddenly come bursting in through the walls to grab him.

"It doesn't do you a fat lot of good if we track you down turn you in, huh?" Shin'ichi almost purred, an extra-ordinarily pleased grin on his intelligent face.

"Exactly."

Hattori broke the tense air by chuckling. Conan smirked as well, a shark-like grin that would have more fitting on Akako than on the not-boy. "Actually, we have a proposition for you, if you're willing."

An eyebrow rose. "Proposition?"

"It took a little convincing-" Conan shot a pointed look at his other self "But you ended up being a bigger help than any of us expected."

"So we're willing not to actively look for who you are behind that monocle in exchange for any useful information you pick up about the Black Organisation." Shin'ichi muttered, just a tad bit of bitterness in his tone. It rankled his sense of justice to not just turn in the thief, even if he could see the advantages. 

"What they're trying to say is we're wondering if you wouldn't mind doing this again." Hattori piped up, swallowing a mouthful of eggs. "Not the get getting bit by vampires and chased by zombies part, but the you get the info we can't access, and we go kick some butt."

An eyebrow arched over the sunglasses as the Kid gave them a level look. "Let me get this straight." He said, his face and voice an unreadable blank. "In exchange for keeping your mouths shut about you -possibly- knowing who I am off hours, you want me to risk my life, my limbs, my reputation and any contacts I might have to play -stoolie- for you?"

Conan and Kudo shifted uncomfortably at the phrasing. Hattori just smirked.

Kid nodded solemnly and turned to leave.

Hattori spoke up. "We'll feed you chocolate." 

The thief turned around and so fast it nearly gave the twins whiplash. "Okay!"

"Okay?!" Shin'ichi sputtered. "...Just like that? Okay?!"

The Kid beamed, his grin stretching from ear to ear. "Yup!"

Conan thought about it for a moment as his twin gaped like a stranded fish. "Well, everyone's got to have their standards, I suppose..."

The Kid laughed, a merry sound as opposed to his usual mocking laughter, as he bonelessly plopped back down on the stool. "Actually, sounds like a deal to me. Some information I pick up is completely worthless to me, but you'd probably find... interesting. But I do have to admit I'm surprised that you'd compromise your 'morals' enough to offer."

"We could just say that it's the lesser of two evils." Hattori smirked. "Like I said, bigger fish in the sea."

"And if we turn you in, it's going to upset Aoko-neechan." Conan piped up, looking once again like an innocent little kid. "And if Aoko-neechan gets upset, Ran-neechan's gonna get upset, then we're -all- in trouble."

Shin'ichi grumbled, his displeasure making it quite clear that the only reason why he was willing to go along with this was because of the threat of his significant other's reaction.

Kid paused, trying to follow that line of logic and failing. He finally shrugged, deciding it really didn't matter what the detectives logic was, just so long as he remained free and out of behind bars.

"You hungry?" Hattori offered. "We've got lots."

"Nah. Thanks but no thanks." The Kid motioned over his shoulder. "I've got to get home and let the doves know that they can stand down from red alert status."

Hattori paused, mulling that mental picture over. "Riiiight."

"Why don't we walk you out then?" Kudo rose from his chair. "The neighbours will think something strange is going on if they see people heading and out of the side doors all the time."

"And they don't already?" Kid quipped, leaning over to pick up his shoes anyway. 

"Ha. Funny." Shin'ichi tilted his head, leading the way out. "This way."

The Kid shrugged and followed, Conan and Hattori's chairs scraping as they got out of their seats to escort the thief out as well. 

"Nice place." The Kid commented, looking around, the hand not holding his shoes pointedly in his sweatshirt pocket. "Looks like some place out of a book."

"Dad's sense of drama." Conan quipped. "And I -am- going to tell him what you said. I want to see if falls down."

"Heh." 

"What was that?" Shin'ichi asked, a bit of a suspicious air in his tone.

"I like his Night Baron series." Kid grinned, tossing Conan a wink. "Though granted, his storylines are getting a bit predictable."

Shin'ichi grinned, pausing at the front entryway. "I'll pass on that last part, if you don't mind."

"Hee." The Kid set his shoes down on the ground below the step to the door. "If you want."

Hattori gave the thief a fang-filled grin, giving him a mock salute. "See you later... Kaito."

Kid raised an eyebrow as he slipped his shoes on. "That's 'Mister Kid' to you, Wolfy." He informed him.

"Eh?" The detectives blinked.

"Don't you know?" He pulled on the heel of one shoe, settling it more firmly on his foot. "'Kid' is English. And in the English language, the family name is last." The thief flashed them a delighted grin.

"You're saying your name really is Kaitou Kid?" Conan echoed in disbelief.

"Well, let's put it this way." He tugged the other shoe. "What does Aoko call me?"

The Twins exchanged a look. "Kaito."

"What did Hakuba call me?"

"Kaito."

"And what am I?"

"Kaitou."

"And so the problem is what-?"

"..." The Twins and Hattori stared at him. 

"Never mind..." Hattori got the feeling that this was one fight he wasn't going to win.

The Kid grinned, giving them a mock salute as he slipped out the door and stepped out the front porch to the Kudo residence with a pleased air. The three detectives watched through the open door as the thief stuck his hands in his pockets and headed down the walk, whistling a merry tune as he did so.

"Think we did the right thing?" Shin'ichi asked uncertainly, still not comfortable with making deals with known thieves.

Conan shrugged. "I think so." 

"He's probably as un-comfortable about it as we are." Hattori noted. "After all, we're the ones that have him by the short hairs, metaphorically speaking."

"Yeah..." The smallest detective glanced up, and froze, wide eyed. "Or does he?!"

"Huh?"

Conan pointed towards the east where the glowing figure of the Kaitou Kid could be seen gliding his way towards downtown.

"What the-?!"

They tossed off their house scuffs and scrambled into their sneakers, running out to the lawn. The figure of dark clad Kid checking both ways before crossing the street, still whistling away could clearly be seen to their left. They turned and looked up to the right at the to verify that yes, the Kid was winging his way in the other direction. 

They looked back and forth several times until both figures disappeared into the distance. "No way..."

Conan thought about it for a minute, then shrugged, dismissing it from his mind as un-important and headed towards the front gate with a large sigh.

"Since we're out here, might as well go get the mail..."

._.·¨¯¨·._.·¨¯¨·._.· <> Finis <>._.·¨¯¨·._.·¨¯¨·._.·

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not that anyone cares, but Conan is the doppelganger, the cure would only work on the original.  
> Voices decided that Shuichi is the master Vampire. Yes, it doesn't make sense, go figure.
> 
> 'Golden Dusk' Mansion has been translated as 'Sunshine', 'Sunset' and 'Golden Dusk'. Take your pick. #^^#
> 
> We asked the Only_One_Truth ML when the scene to kill Vermouth was coming up how they'd like to see her bite the dust. I threw out the anvil idea in jest, but several people liked it so... *shrugs* Squishy.
> 
> This story has held our personal record for being our longest fic for well over half a year, but I think has since been by passed by 'The Price You Pay', another AU which is still in progress. Since the time we've started the story, our opinions, views and grasps of the character have changed, which would prolly explain a great deal of the jerkiness of it. (the rest is attributed to the fact that we're a -short- fic writer)  
> Have been highly amused by several comments made about Conan and Shin'ichi being split the way they are here as 'Icka's Solution' to Conan's problem. *laughs*
> 
> ... what other notes am I forgetting? @_o


	4. It's Raining Men

"Look out below!" The jubilant voice called from the top of the wall the group of five girls were huddled against, currently muttering dark things about a certain thief in white for choosing a rainy night for one of his heists. 

Of course, they could have stayed at home, but that was besides the point. They wanted to be there to cheer their guys on. 

They peered up past their umbrellas just in time to see a pale flash of white come flying over the top of the wall to land in a crouch before them. 

"Ladies." Kid the Phantom Thief paused to give them a bow, kiss Aoko on the cheek, and then took off running. 

Aoko froze, her eyes wide in shock. The girls stared at her as the merry sound of the Kid's laughter rang in the distance.

"You know..." Ran finally turned to comment to Kazuha. "I think the Kid likes Aoko-chan."

Kazuha sweatdropped. Of course, not everyone had the advantage of Hattori passing on strange titbits of information, but still... "Ya think?"

Akako turned and looked at Ai, who was standing calmly next to her. "Think she'll ever get it?" She questioned, not differentiating the difference between Ran the Kid was the Kaito from the case with Vermouth, Gin and Vodka or Aoko figuring things out in general.

"Not likely." The small blond girl deadpanned. 

"Hup!" They looked up in time to see Shin'ichi hot on the Kid's heels. "Hi, Ran!" He called as he landed. 

Ran pointed which way the Kid went. "Go get him, Sweetie!" She cheered.

The soccer player waved and took off after the thief. 

His abrupt appearance appeared to startle Aoko out of her shock. Her face flushed with anger as she closed her umbrella and took off running after Shin'ichi and the thief. "Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid!" She roared waving the umbrella around like a sword.

"Good thing she's wearing jeans tonight." Ran commented. "I don't think she'd want to be climbing walls in a skirt."

"I think the Kid would enjoy that a bit too much." Kazuha barely kept the grin off her face. 

The 'whiirrrrrrrrr' of a familiar skateboard engine alerted them as Conan sailed over head, gripping the board with a hand before he came down to land on the sidewalk. 

"Hi, Ran-neechan!" He waved as he boarded away.

"Good luck, Conan-kun!" Ran cheered her 'little brother' on. Kazuha and Haibara shook their heads. 

"Busy night." Haibara commented. 

"Good seats." Akako corrected.

The scrap of a sneaker on the wall was all the warning they got for Hattori's appearance. He landed on the ground, a broad grin contrasting against his dark skin. From the way his shoulders were shaking, it was obvious that despite his werewolf abilities, he was slowed down from laughing hard. 

"Ahou!" Kazuha snapped, pointing after where the rest of their group had gone. "Both Kudo and Conan are ahead of you!"

He snickered and took of running, the laugh building into what became a full fledged howl that frightened the pigeons off their rests. 

"Sheesh." Kazuha put a hand on her hip. "What's got him so wound up?"

"&$*%^$%@#$%!!!" The sound of cursing heralded the arrival of Inspector Nakamori and the rest of the Kaito Kid taskforce, also climbing/falling over the wall with various degrees of gracefulness and swarming past them. Several of the men appeared to be trying not to smirk or laugh.

Following on their footsteps rang out the keening cry of a hawk. Watson flew overhead, her human falling over the wall to land in a not-quite dignified crouch on the ground in front of them, growling irately the entire time. 

He stood up and the girls saw what was so funny.

His plaid brown deerstalker had been dyed bright neon pink. 

"That's -it-!!! KAAAIIITOOOO!!!" The blond detective roared, practically vibrating as he waved his fists in the air and took off after the others, Watson flying above him. "NO MORE PIXIE STICKS BEFORE A HEIST!!!"

The remaining 4 girls stared. 

"Hallelujah..." Akako mused, looking out from under the umbrella to look at the sky as the men flowed around them. "It's raining men..."

-fin-


	5. Squish

"OHAAAYYYOOOO!!!"

((GLOMP!))

*giiish*

Shin'ichi promptly went red as a particular part of a female's anatomy was unexpectedly pressed up against his back and the added weight of a body pitched him forward. "Aaah!"

"You're looking very cheerful today!" An un-familiar long haired girl chirped from her overly familiarly position, draped over his shoulders. 

He squeaked in return, blushing bright red. "Geh?"

Hattori cracked up laughing as Hakuba maintained his poker face. Conan snorted, slightly bemused by his larger self's situation. 

Which appeared to be the cue for an attack upon him. "You're so CUTEEE!!!" The girl squealed, releasing Shin'ichi to pick up Conan and wrapping him in an over zealous bear hug. 

"Waugh!" He panicked, his hands desperately fluttering as he attempted to pull his head out of her cleavage. He paused after a second, a curious look on his face as he experimentally poked one of the breasts. 

Hakuba nonchalantly stepped on Hattori's foot in a futile attempt to stop the Kansai werewolf from howling with laughter. 

"Wait a minute." The strange girl's grasp loosed just enough so that the small boy could reach over and grab Shin'ichi's hand and press it to her chest. 

Shin'ichi panicked for the second time in under a minute. "Hey! Whoa! What are you DOING?!" He demanded, his voice cracking on the last word.

"Can't you tell?" Conan asked, his usual calm back in full force. 

The girl just giggled, bemused as the Detective of the East stopped freaking out to analyse what his senses were telling him.

*squish squish*

"Wait..." He peered into the girls face. "Kid?!"

Hattori almost fell over, laughing so hard. Hakuba finally allowed a bemused expression to escape his normally stoic face. 

Kid the Phantom Thief grinned back. "Yup!" He cheered, in a distinctly girlish tone.

Conan poked the thief's 'breasts' again, watching them wiggle. "Just what -are- those?" 

Shin'ichi frowned, poking the jiggling mounds as well with no small measure of confusion.

"Jell-o filled water balloons!" Kid smiled, completely comfortable with the fact that A: He was dressed completely in drag, B: He had just glomped both Detectives of the East, male and C: He was currently being felt up by the Detectives of the East.

"How did you get the jell-o in the balloons?" Shin'ichi puzzled. 

"Wasn't easy."

Hakuba cleared his throat, a subtle warning as the girls appeared. Shin'ichi pulled his hands back as if he'd just been burned, looking absurdly guilty. The Kid giggled girlishly, nearly sending Shin'ichi into catatonic shock once more. 

"What are you doing here anyway?" Conan asked, his face in a serious mask. "And please put me down." 

The thief chuckled and carefully complied. "Well, I certainly can't walk up to you and give you information dressed as the Kid, and my reputation would be shot if that got out that I was helping you."

"And he's obviously not going to show up in -normal- clothes and still keep his identity 'secret'." Hakuba added with a slight jab of his own. He was still a bit sore about his ties to the phantom thief. But a deal was a deal. He didn't give away the Kid's secrets, and the Kid didn't use him as a life-sized marionette.

"Which means that disguise is the only way to go." Kid shrugged, standing up. He did a coyish turn on one foot, the skirt flaring out as he turned. "How do I look?"

The twins coughed and sputtered while Hattori went into peals of fresh laughter and Hakuba muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath. 

"Hi!" Ran, Kazuha and Aoko walked up. Kazuha grinned at the new person, a bit of a leery look in her eyes. "Who's your friend?"

"Oh." Shin'ichi deadpanned, looking less than interested. "That's just Ki-"

Kid casually stepped on the detective's foot, jumping forward to greet the girls with energetic bouncing and cheerful smiles. "I'm Kiki, desu!"

Hattori nearly fell over, rolling with laughter. Hakuba debated giving him a kick in the pants but ultimately decided against it as too much effort. 

'Kiki' cheerfully pulled the group along, laughing and talking with the girls like she'd always been there, and flirting outrageously with everyone, much to Shin'ichi's dismay. (The Kid may have been cross dressing, but a pretty girl was still a pretty girl, no matter what clothing he was wearing.)

After a few moments, Hattori got his laughter under control enough to ask Hakuba a question. "How come you weren't surprised at his appearance?"

Hakuba raised an eyebrow. "I always know where he is." He deadpanned.

Hattori nodded. Drawing energy from the thief would form that sort of bond. 

"And you?" The British detective inquired.

Hattori tapped his nose. "Did a pretty good job covering it up with perfume, but a strange scent tipped me off."

Hakuba raised an inquiring eyebrow. 

"Strawberry."

"Well," Hakuba commented drly. "They do say there's always room for Jell-o."

fin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ohayo = Good Morning. Typical glomping battle cry.
> 
> Is called 'Squish' because of a webcomic called '[Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki](http://montrose.is/sgvy/archives/Edda1/Cover.html)' by KittyHawk. If you haven't read it, highly recommend it. 'Squish Squish' indeed...
> 
> This comes from a couple of supervisors at a previous retail job. For Halloween, she dressed as a guy and he dressed as a girl. (both did a really good job of it too)  
> But they're standing there at the front of the store when he proudly tells her to feel his boobs. She is really leery of it when he puts her hands on them and tells her to squeeze. Both of them are groping the falsies and marvelling about how realistic the jell-o filled water balloons feel when a customer walks in. o_O Whoops.
> 
> Also understand that rice or barley filled pantyhose work well too.  
> ^^;; 
> 
> Still need to get Shin'ichi and Saguru in drag, dangit.


	6. Plans

"Moshi Moshi. Aoko desu." She answered her cellphone. Two sets of eyes, one pair violet, the other amber watched her expectantly as she did so. "Ah, Kazuha-chan!" she grinned. "How are you doing?"

Kaito and Hakuba relaxed went back to what they were doing. Namely, Kaito braiding the top half of blond boy's hair into lots and lots of little braids topped with beads as he sang Bob Marley reggae songs and Hakuba painting her toenails. She still hadn't quite figured out what they were doing in her room of all places, or why Hakuba was silently permitting Kaito braid his hair, or why Kaito had decided to teach Hakuba to paint nails, but she wasn't going to argue the end results either. 

The company of two of the best looking guys at school, free live entertainment and painted nails. What more could a girl ask for?

Kaito switched over from an upbeat version of 'Sun is Shining' to a mellow 'No, woman. No cry' as Kazuha railed in her other ear. 

Hakuba raised an eyebrow. "Is everything alright?"

She put a hand over her cellphone's receiver. "Kazuha-chan wants to get Shin'ichi-kun and Ran-chan together. She's been talking to Ran-chan."

"I wanna help!" Kaito immediately brightened. "I wanna help!!"

The blond thought this over. "What does Edogawa say about this?"

"I wanna help!"

Aoko waited until Kazuha paused briefly to take a breath before passing on the question. 

"She says that Conan-kun is about ready to kill his larger self." Aoko relayed back with a grin. "Or find a nice length of rope to tie his twin and Ran-kun together...." She blushed. "Naked."

"Ah." Hakuba nodded. "Consider me available if you require assistance for what ever plan is concocted."

"WANNA HELP!" Kaito cheered, even more enthusiastically if that was possible.

"Help has recruited itself." Aoko passed on dryly. Kazuha laughed merrily as Hakuba rolled his eyes and gently blew on the nail polish he had just applied to help it dry faster.

She repressed a giggle, the air tickled. "Kazuha-chan says you can't help unless you ask a certain someone out to dinner first'." She informed Kaito.

The violet-eyed boy gave her a petulant look over the blond's head. "But I already asked Hakuba over for dinner last week!" He whined in complete innocence.

Kaito promptly found himself eating carpet, both she and Hakuba sitting on him, Hakuba on the shoulders, she on his legs. Hakuba politely pulled the other boy's shirt out of his pants, baring the pale skin of Kaito's back as she grabbed a marker off the desk and pulled the cap off with her teeth. 

"Thank you Hakuba-kun." 

"Mmmrrrphhh!" 

"You are most welcome." Hakuba said stiffly, before reaching for the selection of nail polishes and grabbing one of a violet hue, which he then began to carefully apply to the magician's hands. "Don't move or you'll ruin it." He advised.

Kaito dug his face out of the carpet. "Is this anyway to treat your Master?!" He demanded hotly.

Aoko raised an eyebrow. She was aware that Kaito and Hakuba's relationship had dramatically changed recently, something about Hakuba's pale demeanour, but she wasn't completely enlightened as to the cause of these changes. Although anything that brought the two rivalling boys together on a frequent and friendly basis would be something worth investigating, there were other times she felt it best not to inquire too deeply as to the reasonings for the changes in relationship went.

"Stuff it, Bloodsucker." Hakuba retorted.

"It was just that ONE TIME." Kaito protested. Aoko noticed that he kept his hands still anyway, despite his grumbling and his back twitching under her moving marker. 

"Kazuha says that whatever we did was probably exactly how one's master should be treated." She announced. Hakuba looked stoically amused.

On the other hand, there were days when she felt -entirely- out of the loop.

"So I take it you have a plan?" She asked Kazuha, adding scales to the fish she had just drawn jumping across Kaito's spine. 

"Still wanna help!" Kaito called. 

"Why are you so eager to help?" She queried back suspiciously, adding a smaller fish beside that one.

"Cause then Kudo'd owe ME, and maybe GET OFF MY BACK."

"In other words, he'd be too distracted snogging Ran to deal with you." Hakuba translated.

"Precisely." Kaito agreed unashamedly. "Wanna help!"

"This weekend sound good to discuss plans?" Aoko asked with a small resigned sigh, starting on a third fish. 

Kazuha enthusiastically approved.

..........//Ö\\\\.....................

"Oi, Kudo." With that scant warning, Kudo Shin'ichi suddenly found himself swept up the stairs to his house, carried along by the combined inertia and mass of Hakuba Saguru, Hattori Heiji and the dark clad, sunglasses wearing Kaitou Kid.

"Hey! Wait! What are you doing?!" He protested, squirming in their determined grasp to no avail. 

"Something that should have been rectified quite some time ago." Hakuba informed him dryly as they escorted him briskly to his room, where his younger self was waiting for them. 

"I've got his clothes laid out." Edogawa Conan said upon their entrance. Kid shut and secured the door behind him, having already long sealed the windows shut to prevent escape through those means. Hakuba and Hattori proceeded to drop the startled Shin'ichi on his bed, not quite releasing him.

"Ya have one of two choices, Kudo." Hattori informed him cheerfully. 

"Choice number one," Hakuba intoned.

"Ya don't put up any argument and do what we politely ask ya ta do." The werewolf motioned to the clothes neatly laid out next to them. "Primarily fer the moment, put those on."

"Choice number two,"

"We put 'em ya."

Both Hattori and Kid grinned, currently dull fangs glinting in the low light. Shin'ichi swallowed, quickly glancing at the two still holding him, then at his smaller half.

Conan crossed his arms, a stubborn look on his face that brooked no room for disagreements. "It's for your own good, Niichan."

Kudo winced. "I can dress myself." He demurred.

"Glad ta hear it." Hattori released Kudo and tilted his head in the Kid's direction. "We'll finish this part up. Go ahead and get ready fer your part."

With a salute and a flash of pink smoke, the thief vanished, the still locked door at his back. Conan stubbornly positioned himself in front of the door. Shin'ichi let out a pained grimace at the lack of support from someone who was essentially himself, smaller.

Hakuba released the blue-eyed detective as well and backed up to give him a few feet of space. "If it is any consolation, Aoko-kun, Kazuha-chan and Sonoko-chan are giving your girlfriend a similar treatment at her residence."

This snapped Shin'ichi's attention out of the minor funk he was currently residing in. "Ran?"

"Yup." Hattori grinned. "So the sooner ya get dressed, the sooner you can see her, huh?"

Suddenly, they didn't have a problem getting Shin'ichi into the suit that had been laid out for him.

..........//Ö\\\\.....................

"Are you sure this looks alright?" Ran asked nervously, turning on her toes to inspect the back of the dress in the mirror for the fifteenth time.

"It's perfect." Sonoko reassured her. "Shin'ichi's gonna love it."

Kazuha chuckled. "You could show up in a burlap rice sack and Shin'ichi wouldn't care. Relax, Ran-chan."

"Yes, but..." Ran fidgeted nervously. 

"We got it covered." Kazuha grinned. "Trust us."

"And-" Aoko handed her something shiny and metallic. "If he does try to run off, use these. I borrowed them from Hakuba-kun."

Ran took one look at the object in her hand and started giggling.

"Not that that's going to happen." Sonoko amended, slinging an arm around her best friend's shoulders, Ran allowing herself to be pulled into the hug. "Because our boy Shin'ichi is madly head over heels for our Ran."

"And in case of a sudden cause of death, we've got it covered." Kazuha added, leaning on Ran's open side, wrapping her arm around Ran's back. 

"So you just sit back, relax and have a good time, okay?" Aoko grinned, slinging her arms around Kazuha and Sonoko, drawing them all together in a group hug and cheerfully bumping everyone's heads together. "This is for you."

"All right." Ran giggled, releasing Kazuha to wipe the corners of her eyes. "I guess I am worrying too much."

A car horn beeped from below the window. "That would be them." Kazuha gave Ran one last squeeze before releasing her, the group huddle falling away.

Sonoko stuck her head out the window. "SHE'LL BE RIGHT DOWN!!!"

"I think everyone in the neighbourhood heard that..." Kazuha commented dryly.

"Well... she will be." Aoko shrugged. "Ready, Ran-kun?"

"No?" Ran ventured timidly, the butterflies returning to her stomach with a vengeance.

"Perfect." The three other girls tugged her out of her room and down the stairs. Hakuba, his hair sticking out every which way in a mess of braids, was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs. His face as impassive as ever, he walked over and opened the car door for her.

"Um. Nice hair." She commented as Kazuha and Sonoko did everything except push her inside the vehicle. He inclined his head blandly and shut the door behind her once she took her seat. 

Shin'ichi, looking as handsome and as nervous as she'd ever seen him, smiled at her. 

Heart in her throat, she smiled back.

..........//Ö\\\\.....................

"Bored." Kaito yawned. 

"I'm well aware of that fact, thank you." Hakuba grumped from the passenger side of the front of the limousine he was currently acting as the driver for. Being the only one in the group with the know-how to drive a car and having the fake IDs to match did have it's disadvantages. "You've only stated so over dozen times in the past thirty seven minutes."

"Hakubaaaaaaa..." Kaito moaned, slumping sideways in the seat, his head resting against the undead boy's shoulder. "Entertain meee..."

Hakuba pushed him upright with one arm, none too gently. "No."

"Ch'." Kaito sulked. Stupid blond wouldn't play cards, wouldn't play 'I-spy' games and had removed all of his reading material before he got in the car. Something about gem and mineral magazines being 'improper reading' for a kaitou. Spoilsport. So what if he was mixing a little bit of business in with his... no, he couldn't quite call this 'pleasure'.

Now what Hattori and Kazuha were doing, that could be considered plesure. Those two had lucked out in the roles department, eating dinner at the top of this... what was this tower called again? With the funky round floor at the top? Eh, anyway, the Osaka duo had the cushy job, up in the restaurant too, keeping an eye out for trouble. If something did happen, Heiji was there to take care of it and Ran was under orders to use Hakuba's cuffs that Aoko had slipped her and make sure that Shin'ichi wasn't going anywhere.

Kudo was a closet romantic. Who knew?

And here he was, stuck with the silent wonder. Which wasn't so bad, most of the time anyway, but when he was bored, it just sucked.

It was too bad Aoko wasn't here. Then they could do something. Talk, or paint nails or something stupid. It was more fun lately, with the three of them. 

A tap at his window made him glance up, then grin. Speaking of the devil. Aoko waggled a white paper bag at him, grinning wildly back. Hakuba opened his door, motioning for her to come around and get inside the car with a small smile. She dodged around the front of the vehicle, quickly diving into the car with a muffled laugh.

"I brought Mos-burger, that all right?" She bounced across the seats until she was in the middle, Hakuba climbing in after her so that the three of them were squished comfortably together. "Was kind of bored, so I figured I'd bring you dinner." 

"Bless you." He took the offered burger with a grateful smile. The food was as welcome as the company. Hakuba thanked her as well, then just held the burger in the his hands, like he wasn't quite sure what to do with it. "If you aren't hungry, I'll eat it."

Hakuba passed the burger over with a grateful air. Kaito just smiled in return. After all, he -was- eating for two.

Fortunately, Aoko didn't notice the interchange, busy unwrapping her own burger. Hakuba smiled at her, leaning back in his seat and relaxing as he sat guard. Kaito quietly snickered into his own burger, sprawling back into his seat as well, bumping elbows with Aoko. She nudged him back, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

It was kind of nice, the three of them out together eating dinner.

Almost felt a bit like a date...

-fin-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't always sleep very well when travelling. Because if we're travelling, that means there's new things out there to see, and my body doesn't want to shut down because there's all that out there, even if we can't see it.  
> So after a fourteen hour train trip and seven hour car trip from Tucson to San Francisco for Yaoi-con this past year in addition to being awake for about two days straight, we were -gone-. Mentally. No barriers what so ever. Though I do vaguely remember a discussion about cross dressing mermen...  
> The result of this brain fry was several fics... tweaked. Mutated. Whatever. Including us tossing out the idea of a Hakuba/Aoko/Kaito pairing, something to do with the facts that A: Kaito wubs Aoko and B: Hakuba receives energy from Kaito, which means different kinds of energies. Kaito's on a sugar high, so is Hakuba. So if Kaito's horny, Hakuba would be... yeah. You fill it in.  
> Anyway, we were expecting revulsion. However, much to our surprise, no one protested, and in fact some people encouraged it, even after pointing out that it would be considered necrophilia, since Hakuba is technically dead.  
> Go figure.  
> So... they're not quite dating, but the possibility is there. Discount if you like, or not, your call.  
> I have no clue on those braids however.


	7. Pros and Cons

"I think I definitely got the better deal." Shin'ichi grinned at the smaller version of himself. They were in the middle of a debate over who benefited the most about them having split as they did. Privately, Ran won because she got both of them, but that didn't stop them from debating it. "I get to kiss Ran."

Which he did. As often as he could. With a great deal of pleasure.

"Yeah, but you don't get to share beds with her anymore on trips." Conan smirked slyly. Shin'ichi may have been back to the body of a 17 year old, but Conan still had the brain of one in a 6 year old's body.

Shin'ichi nodded speculatively. 

Conan's smirk turned into a grin. "And guess where I get to sit when the car's crowded." 

In Ran's lap. Usually with her arms wrapped around him. With his head resting on her cleavage, no matter how he tried for it not to. "Soft. And. Bouncy." He leered at his bigger twin.

Shin'ichi glared. He remembered. He also hadn't gotten that far with her yet.

"Bastard." Shin'ichi growled, conceding victory. 

Conan beamed triumphantly. 

+++ Later ++++

"How come I have to sit in YOUR lap?" Conan growled from his awkward position on Shin'ichi's lap. Ran was sitting next to them, a happy clueless expression on her face. 

"If -I- don't get to." Shin'ichi hissed back at his smaller self. "-You- don't get to."

-fin-


	8. New Moon

The nights of the new moon were the worst. 

Probably the fact that there was no reflected daylight in the night's sky to quiet the urgings of the supposedly quelled blood. Perhaps it was just psychological. But what ever it was, the nights of the new moon were the worst for Kuroba.

Which meant that they were the worst for Hakuba as well. 

Hakuba was parasitically linked to the Magician, what ever Kuroba felt, he felt as well. And what ever Kuroba felt, Kuroba felt deeply. Between the core and the surface, those feelings were filtered, shifted and masked, so what appeared on Kuroba's face was occasionally what he was feeling, but not often. Kuroba was bright as well, as smart as Hakuba was, in his own way, but he felt first. 

He'd learned to read Kuroba, not by his face because of that, but of what ever the violet-eyed former half-vamp was feeling. There was a slightly guilty sensation, if he was capable of feeling any honest emotion, to experience the world through Kuroba's emotions, but it was better than feeling nothing at all.

There had been a brief time during the first few weeks following Hakuba's death and subsequent dependance on the Magician when Kuroba had attempted to filter his own emotions, so as to not inflict them upon Hakuba. Hakuba had taken him aside and in no uncertain terms asked him to not to do so. 

Hakuba was the ruthlessly logical one, had been before his death and continued to be so. To be bereft of emotion, even someone else's was was a bit like suddenly being stuck watching nothing but static after watching colour television all your life. To feel what Kuroba felt was like watching black and white television, but it was better than mere static or numbness. He was numb enough as it was already. Eating, drinking, sleeping and tactile sensitively were already forbidden to him, he'd cling to what traces of sanity he could.

"Thought I'd find you here." He commented mildly, stepping on to the school rooftop. Kuroba was standing in the middle of the rooftop, a black shadow where no shadow should exist, staring at the star-filled sky. 

Kuroba didn't answer. Hakuba hadn't expected him to. He walked out on roof, stopping less than an arm's length away from the brunette, watching the stars as well. 

Usually the feeling was a mild one, a faint pull in the flow and the energies he got from Kuroba. But tonight, the pull was stronger, a craving, almost a hunger. 

The vampire in Kuroba's blood, though faint, was still present. And nights like tonight, it liked to make itself known.

Mixed with that hunger was hatred, a dark self-loathing, for feeling that. For wanting to give in, to go out and feed. Kuroba never did, but the urge was still there. 

"I want to -bite-." Kuroba finally growled, his body tense. Hakuba could almost feel the same ache in his own teeth, just from Kuroba's voice, to want to bury his own teeth into soft resilient flesh. He thought about it for a moment, then came to a decision.

"So do so." He said placidly, reaching up and undoing his tie, then the top few buttons of his shirt, pulling the stiff collar away from his neck, baring it to the summer air. He couldn't feel the air's temperature, but memory said that it should be warm. 

Astonishment flooded through him as Kuroba turned, his eyes huge in shock and a vague bit of twisted lust/horror. "You can not hurt me." Hakuba reminded him blandly. Hakuba had no blood flow of which to drink from on the rare off chance that the faint points of Kuroba's teeth should break skin. What would it hurt? Hakuba was dead. If there was any damage to his body, Kuroba could heal it within a matter of minutes anyway. 

What ever Kuroba felt, Hakuba felt. Why should they both suffer if there was a compromise or a solution at hand anyway?

Kuroba's eyes seemed to glow red for a moment, the Magician's mouth opening slightly as Kuroba took a step closer. The red glow faded as Kuroba stopped, forcing everything back, pulling everything down to the point where Hakuba couldn't feel any trace of emotion. It was a bit like being slapped in the face for making a improper suggestion.

"Don't..." Kuroba closed his eyes, taking a deep breath through his nose, releasing it from his mouth. "Don't make suggestions like that." The voice was calm, the Magician's masks firmly in place.

"Is that an order?" Hakuba questioned. Kuroba had given him one order since Hakuba had been bound to him, before blunting informing Hakuba that he wasn't going to give him any orders. It was really more of a request than an order, but it was one Hakuba had chosen to obey.

Kuroba had asked him to make sure that he didn't harm anyone. That request was to supersede any other requests or orders Kuroba gave him. 

But as Hakuba's 'Master', Kuroba could control what Hakuba did, what actions he could perform. Kuroba chose not to, but Hakuba was still highly aware of the possibility.

He got a trickle of irritation for the question. "No." Kuroba sulked slightly, as if insulted.

"Then what is the problem?" Hakuba questioned. "You can't hurt me, it will make you feel better and I honestly do not mind."

Kuroba let out a sharp bitter laugh, little more than a bark. "Dammit, Hakuba. You're not my chew toy."

"No." Hakuba agreed. He paused for a moment, trying to think of a good way to put it. He felt what Kuroba felt. He was bound to Kuroba, most likely until the Magician's death. He was indebted Kuroba for freeing him from the ones who killed him, for giving him even this half life and didn't have many ways to pay him back. He had respected Kuroba before everything went horror movie-ish and he respected even more him now. "... But I could be."

This time he got a more genuine sounding snicker. "You sure?" Kuroba asked, the trickle of irritation turning to one of uncertainty. 

"Yes." 

Kuroba's shoulders slumped in sudden relaxation, the barriers lowering again. Hakuba could almost taste the hunger once more, the urge for blood, with an ache for a bit of destruction on the side. Hakuba pulled the collar away from his neck again, baring the collar bone. Before even his unnatural senses could react, Kuroba's teeth were sinking into the skin there, pressing against the collar bone in a way that would have been painful if he still feel past the vague sense of pressure. 

The spike of pleasure/relief he got from Kuroba was so intense he gasped in response. Kuroba growled in irritation, lifting his mouth from his neck and Hakuba grabbed the back of the brunette's head, pushing back where it had been. Kuroba did just that, biting down at the top of Hakuba's shoulder, where it met neck, fingers grabbing and releasing the fabric of Hakuba's long coat like a kneading happy cat. 

There was no blood, like Hakuba had said, but the pressure of cool flesh against Kuroba's teeth was enough to satisfy the brunette's cravings. Hakuba was feeling pleasantly buzzed from it, absently petting and nibbling on Kuroba in return. Kuroba wasn't bothering to filter or hide anything from him, so it was a bit like a closed circuit, feeding off of each other. He felt good because Kuroba felt good, so he made Kuroba feel good, which made him feel good, so he made Kuroba feel good... 

He heard the door to the roof open, a soft footstep on the cement. He twisted his head to see Aoko standing at the door way, staring at them. Her eyes were wide and he realised what it must look like to her, seeing two of her best friends apparently making out on a rooftop. Two of her MALE best friends, who most of the time were snarking at each other.

"You're welcome to join us." He offered, his voice even as he carded the hair at the back of Kuroba's neck with his fingers. Kuroba licked his neck, looking up at the intruder, a pleasant hazy feeling coming off of him in waves. The pleasant feeling disappeared, plummeting as if the world had suddenly dropped out from under them. 

"a-Aoko." Kuroba breathed, his grasp on Hakuba tightening briefly before letting go. He did not step back, much to Hakuba's private peace of mind. 

"I saw Hakuba-kun come up here." She whispered, her own hands clenched into fists pressed against her chest. "I thought... I thought something might be wrong..."

"Kuroba's having a bad night." Hakuba unwrapped one arm from around Kaito to offer his hand to her. Despair and panic pounded off of Kuroba, although the depth of it did not show on the Magician's face. Kuroba may have been fond of Hakuba, but he loved Aoko with a passion he kept guarded from even himself. If this went bad, it would hurt all of them deeply. "Join us?"

"I... er... um... okay." She stepped forward, taking his hand. He pulled her towards them, enveloping her in their circle. Her posture radiated confusion, but there was trust and acceptance there too. "Anything I can do?"

He nuzzled her hair, silently urging her to do the same for Kuroba. Things had been building for a while, spending more time with each other, being in each other's space or just on each other in general. He would have been blind and a lousy detective not to have seen it. 

Aoko reached out, wrapping an arm around Kuroba's waist and resting her head on his shoulder, probably what it had looked to her like Kuroba and he had been doing earlier. Minus the whole teeth and nibbling on each other bit. Hakuba rested his lips against Kuroba's hair, relaxing as Kuroba did so. Awe, relief and comfort seeped from the Magician, who wrapped an arm around Aoko as well.

The three of them just held each other for a while, weight shifting from one to the other. The holding shifted to tentative caresses and somewhere along the line Hakuba lost his jacket as padding from the concrete roof as they shifted to a more horizontal position. It was a bit like managing three times as many limbs as usual, some sort of six armed, six legged creature, but they managed. 

Caresses graduated into minor petting and some nuzzling. When Kuroba's energies shifted back into hunger while he was nuzzling Aoko's neck, Hakuba bit him on the shoulder, a sudden reminder. It worked, hunger shifting back into shame, then comfort again. It was innocent feeling, overlaid with the spiciness of the possibility of more later. 

Aoko finally yawned, drifting off to sleep, the three of them curled up around each other in an extricable mess. Neither of the others had goose-bumps or appeared to be shivering, so Hakuba surmised it was warm enough not to worry about needing blankets. He couldn't tell temperature, freezing was the same as broiling to him. 

Kuroba followed her with a muttered request to wake them in a little while, leaving Hakuba to watch over them and watch the stars change. He missed sleep sometimes. Occasionally he could mentally drift enough to achieve a partially dreaming state, but that was rare. And as ways to spend the night went, it wasn't bad. Psychology textbooks said that physical contact was beneficial to maintaining mental stability.

Except he was dead, so he wasn't quite sure just what exactly 'mental stability' meant for him. 

Aoko broke him out of his musings by waking up, blinking blurrily at first Kuroba and then him. Kuroba had insinuated himself in the middle, or they had insinuated him into the middle, he still wasn't sure, but he still had an arm and part of a leg in contact with her. "Your skin is cold." She commented softly, her fingertips resting against the inside of his wrist, where the pulse usually was.

Which was probably why Kuroba was in the middle in the first place, to avoid her from realising that oh gee, he didn't have a -heart beat-. "It usually is." 

"Oh."

He mentally prepared himself for the barrage of questions to follow. He couldn't really see a way out of them, she was bound to find out what he was eventually and ask him to leave. She and Kuroba had been friends forever, heading for more long before his arrival. He was the interloper, the leech. It was only proper that he be the one to bow out and let their relationship continue it's proper course. 

She smiled peacefully at him, resting her head back on Kuroba. "Then I'll sleep next to you in the summer time." She yawned. "And next to Kaito in the winter."

.... Or she could have come to her own conclusions and decisions, in her own simple way. He wondered if Kuroba was aware.

"All right." He agreed. She nodded at him and went back to sleep, hugging his arm. 

Emotion, Logic and Simplicity? Id, Super Id and Ego? Something. Threesome. They'd figure it out somehow. 

-fin-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sings* "All I want for Christmas is 20+ temps, 20+ temps, 20+ temps...."  
>  _[Mar 2019 Edit: This author's note really confused me until I remembered we'd been living in New Zealand at this point in time, and we're referring to Celsius, not Farenheit. Seasons are flipped, and I'd just moved there from a 104f/40c+ desert, so I was freezing during the Kiwi summer which didn't reach much above 70f that year.]_


	9. Giftfic for Kasuchi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a fic request from [Kasuchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kasuchi/pseuds/Kasuchi) back when Livejournal was a thing.

When Aoko first learned of Kaito and Hakuba's strange relationship-cum-connection, she hadn't been entirely what to think. Well, first she thought it was one of Kaito's jokes. Until Kaito had plunged a knife into Hakuba''s gut and it had come out with out blood. And Hakuba had glared, stuffing his intestines back in. 

Once she'd stopped vomiting, and Kaito had healed Hakuba's wound, most of what she felt was a sort of sadness and a sympathy towards her undead blond friend. Although it was mixed with relief that he was still alive. Sort of. Moving and making sarcastic comments, anyway.

Then she learned to accept it and eventually forgot that he'd been anything else. Hakuba was Hakuba, whether he was breathing or not. It was just one of those things, like Kaito pulling dove from the air. 

Eventually, she and Kaito started dating and a slight problem arose. 

Okay, so maybe it wasn't a -slight- problem, she didn't want to be accidentally insulting. But it was rather embarrassing to find out that everything she and Kaito did in private... wasn't so private. Everything that Kaito felt was passed on to Hakuba, although in a slightly muted fashion. 

To his credit, Hakuba had looked as embarrassed as she felt, in his own fashion. 

Which was when Kaito came up with his great suggestion. If Hakuba was going to be involved anyway, why not -involve- him?

She hadn't been entirely sure and Hakuba started stammering until Kaito sort of kissed him, shutting him up and things... kind of went from there. Petting Hakuba didn't have much of a reaction because of his dead body, although he did enjoy it, but if she got a good spot on Kaito, both boys would groan. Being pressed between two bodies, one warm one cool to the touch took some getting used to, but it wasn't bad either. There was some confusion while they figured out where what limbs went where, especially since Kaito and Hakuba kept trying to do the same thing at the same time, but they worked it out eventually.

"And you know what the best part is?" Kaito whispered at her between kisses. Hakuba slowly moved down her body, making her shiver. "If he's dead, he doesn't have to breathe."

"Oh?" She questioned, not making the connection as Hakuba's head disappeared between her legs.

And then she did. 

"OoooOOOOooohhhh...."


	10. Beach Time

3257

"Alright. Explain this to me one more time." Kaito crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at Hakuba, who was spreading some towels underneath an extremely large beach umbrella in the sand. "We come to the beach for a lotta sun, sand and water, and you wanna hide under a beach umbrella the entire time?"

"Precisely." 

"Riiiiiiiight." Kaito scratched the side of his head. "And you came with us -why-?"

"Because Aoko-kun LOOKED at me." Hakuba deadpanned, as if not at all ashamed to be bullied into something by a small slip of a girl. After all, he was talking to probably the only other person in the entire world who understood that completely. 

The power of Aoko's glare was truly scary to behold.

"That's it, I'm getting on a sugar high." Kaito waved his hands in the air and looked around for the nearest ice cream vender. 

Hakuba winced, changing expressions for the first time this morning. He did not care to be reminded of what happened the -last- time Kaito decided that the leech on his energies needed to lighten up. "...and then Koizumi threatened to lock me in a room with that blasted pet cat of hers if I did not come. The cat YOU gave her."

"Err..." This time the magician winced. He wasn't fond of being reminded of his own magical failures. In this case, the transformation of a harmless little bunny into a spiky winged cat. That breathed fire. "Okay, okay, you win. This time. But if the girls drag you into something, I'm not coming to your rescue."

"Fair enough." Hakuba agreed mildly. "And not to point out the obvious or anything, but Mr. Sun is most emphatically -not- my friend."

The zombie didn't shrivel into a mummified husk or burst into flames, but he did find that too much sun did tend to make him sluggish and slow. Not to mention was murder on his un-dead eyes, which were more comfortable in the cool shades of after dark. 

A theory that Kaito apparently agreed with, seeing as he wore his own pair of sunglasses almost religiously while on the sand.

"There's always the Sugar High option." Kaito offered cheerfully.

"No."

"Spoilsport."

"Here comes Aoko-kun and Koizumi." Distractions were good, distractions were your friend.

"About time. How long does it take to change into a bathing su..." Kaito's voice trailed off as the brunette caught sight of the other two members of their party. 

Kaito blinked. 

And blinked again. 

Hakuba smirked as the magician's jaw fell somewhere around his ankles as while his brain verified that yes, he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. 

Aoko in a blue bathing suit strolling towards him with a faint blush and a small nervous smile on her face was quite a lovely and expected picture. 

However, by the rush of energy and sudden blood flow, Kaito was obviously not prepared for Aoko in a Blue BIKINI. 

Ye, praise be to whomever god invented the bikini, it t'were a lovely sight... 

"Ran-kun, Kazuha-kun and Akako-chan dragged Aoko-kun swimsuit shopping when they heard she was going to the beach." Hakuba commented genteelly in his ear, startling Kaito from his reverie. One of the more interesting twists of being undead was the fact that the girls took him for essentially neuter and had a habit of discussing things in front of him that they would normally not in front of other boys. "Tissue?"

"Thanks." Kaito took a tissue from the offered box and wiped his nose from the aftermath of the blood rushing to other places besides his head. The magician paused a moment, looking at the tissue, then up at Hakuba. "Wait a minute. Why are -you- carrying tissues around? You shouldn't get nosebleeds!"

The blond zombie raised an eyebrow. "Force of habit." He commented blandly with a slight shrug. Allergies were a pain and with cross-continental travel, they were almost assuredly a certainty.

Kaito looked around the beach, and the amount of scantily clad people, over at Hakuba, whose skin had always been extremely pale even when alive, then over at Koizumi, who was wearing something that resembled nothing more than black dental floss in a cobweb pattern. 

And obviously reached the wrong conclusion. "Ohh..." 

Hakuba shrugged. Whatever. It certainly wasn't worth the argument.

Kaito's face lit up into a gigantic grin. "You pervert!" He laughed.

"Hardly." Hakuba's tone was dryer than the sun warmed sand they were standing on.

"Kaito! Hakuba-kun!" Aoko smiled as she nervously set her bag of clothing down next to the umbrella. "Thanks for setting up while we got changed."

"Not a problem." Hakuba gave her a small smile. "It is not like we have to do much in order to change." Upon finding a spot, Kaito had immediately stripped down to the swim shorts he'd worn as normal clothing, and Hakuba had switched tops to an open Hawaii'an patterned shirt. 

Which in addition to the customary tropical leaves on a black background, was decorated with grinning white skulls. It was on loan from Koizumi, after his 'Tropical Fish From Around The World' shirt mysteriously went missing.

"Of course, the time generally does differ as to what you are changing in to." Koizumi purred, reclining on one of the towels completely hidden in shade. Both boys ignored her jibe.

"Are you going to be able to swim in that?" Kaito asked, idly snapping the shoulder strap of Aoko's bikini. "It doesn't look anything like a life preserver..."

"Kaito!" She snapped his hand away, her face turning red with anger.

"Translation." Hakuba spoke up wryly from the relative safety of the other side of Koizumi. "He could barely keep his eyes in his sockets when he saw you."

"Hakuba." Kaito shot the detective a particularly dirty glare. "Please die."

He quite obligingly toppled over on to the sand much like he had been struck by a two by four.

"Hakuba-kun!" Aoko reacted with shock as she dove to check on him. Koizumi muffled a snicker.

"D'oh." Kaito smacked his head with his hand. Never tell someone who was dead to drop dead. It left them too big of an opening to get you back with. "Completely forgot. Not funny Saguru-chan."

The zombie opened one eye. "We live to please." He deadpanned. Undead gallows humour. Had to love it.

"Or not, as the case my be." Koizumi snerked. 

"That too."

+++

"Heiji?" Kazuha questioned as the Kansai werewolf pricked his ears up and began scanning the beach. "Somethin' wrong?"

"No..." He trailed off, still looking around suspiciously. "I just thought I heard someone familiar."

"Familiar good or familiar bad?" Conan questioned, setting his ice chest down in the sand with a muffled grunt.

"Not sure." Heiji said before giving himself a shake, both mentally and physically before shooting the smallest detective a small smile. "I'll keep a nose out anyway."

"Probably a good idea all around." Shin'ichi agreed. Just because they had gotten three of the known agents of the Black Organization was no reason to lax their guard. 

But a nice relaxing day at the beach had sounded like a good idea when Kazuha and Ran had brought it up. Sonoko had already had plans, something that pleased Conan to no end, and the rest of the Shonen Tantei either couldn't come or had elected to stay home, in Haibara's case

"I've got protection charms in my bag." Conan offered, reaching into his own small knapsack and pulling out various items. "Omamori and sunscreen all around?"

"Sounds good. I'll stick some ofuda on the umbrella."

After all, it wouldn't do to scare away the ghosts and ghoulies just to end up with a nasty sunburn at the end of the day.

+++

"Ooo! Hey! Check this out!" Aoko grinned, waving a slip of paper as she ran up to join Hakuba and Koizumi under the large umbrella. Kaito followed behind her with skewers of freshly grilled yakitori, the chicken still steaming on their skewers in the warm beach air, a remarkably bland expression on his face. 

"What'd you find, sweetheart?" Koizumi purred, lowering her sunglasses to get a better glimpse of the flyer. 

"There's going to be a swimsuit contest!" Beaming, Aoko handed her the flyer. "You should enter, Akako-chan! You'd win for sure!" 

"Hmm..." The witch debated it. "It's for both men and women. Hakuba-kun and Kaito-kun should join in as well."

"Not interested." Hakuba waved it off, content to hide under the nice shady beach umbrella.

"Pass." Kaito agreed, handing out the grilled yakitori.

"Pass?" Aoko's eyebrows rose. "But you love performing! And it's the talk of half the beach, almost everyone's going to be there."

"This-" Kaito waved a lazy hand towards the flyer "-is -not- performing. There is no display of talents or skills. It is merely a chance for people to oogle over the oppisite, or same, gender dressed in skimpy clothing in a large group as to not make complete fools of themselves."

"In other words, below your dignity." 

"Exactly." Kaito said, nodding his head in confirmation as he plopped down on the towel next to Hakuba, as if the zombie would offer protection from the insanity of the girls.

Koizumi glanced between the two boys. More specifically, at Hakuba wider, broad shoulder frame, built for power and stamina, then down at Kaito's thinner, whipcord and muscle frame, made for speed and agility. Not that Kaito was lacking in strength, by any means, it just wasn't quite as impressive when compared side by side next to someone physically bigger than him. 

"Worried that your physique is lacking?" The witch inquired idly, one eyebrow quirking in amusement. 

Kaito sniffed disdainfully. "Hardly. If you want to go, I wish you luck, but you won't see me anywhere near the stage."

With that, he laid down on the blanket, pushed the sunglasses firmly over his eyes and appeared to promptly go to sleep.

"Party pooper." Aoko muttered, then turned and grabbed Hakuba instead. 

+++

"Guess what? Guess What?!" Kazuha cheered as she and Ran brought back the ice cream. 

"There's a dead body?" Conan dead panned. His larger self tossed a sunscreen bottle towards him for bringing the subject up. Heiji shot him a glare as well. 

"Actually-" Ran said, distracting them with their ice cream cones.

"That wasn't it." Kazuha scolded them. "We found somethin' -interestin'-." The ponytailed girl unwrapped a flyer from where it had gotten stuck around her ice cream cone. She held it out for Heiji to read.

"A swimsuit contest?" Heiji sceptically read out loud. 

"The Grand Prize for each gender is 10,000 yen and a trip for two to Okinawa!" Kazuha bubbled. "Second place is four tickets to Miracle Land!"

Conan and Shin'ichi glanced at each other. "Pass." They deadpanned. 

"Amusement Parks-"

"-Give us the hives." 

"Really?" Ran looked confused. "I never noticed." 

The twins shivered. Between getting shrunk at Tropical Land, Ran getting shot at in Tropical Land, and Ran and the Shonen Tantei almost getting blown up in Miracle Land, they'd had enough of amusement parks to last them a lifetime.

"Hah." Heiji smirked."Like you would win anyway."

"HEIJI!" Kazuha snapped.

"Hah, what ever." Heiji shrugged, handing the paper back to Kazuha with a bored air. "What self-respectin' guy would go up on stage for a bunch of girls to ogle at anyway?"

+++

"Well, I'll be. Hakuba Saguru." Heiji's grin split across his face as the stone-faced undead detective took his place next to Shin'ichi. "Fancy runnin' into ya here! What are you doin' here?

"Being flatly outnumbered." The zombie said succulently, glancing at the crowd below the stage uneasily. They hadn't let him wear his sunglasses on stage and he was missing them for their sun shielding properties as well as camouflage. Surely someone would notice the slight milkiness to his eyes. "What are you doing here?"

"Equal exchange." Shin'ichi commented, raising a hand in greeting. "If we entered, the girls would enter too."

The blond tilted his head to the side, musing that over. "Logical." He finally decreed.

"Speaking of enterin', where's Kuroba?" Heiji mused, looking around. "Would have thought he'd be the first one on stage." 

"He decided against it." Hakuba said drolly. "Something about a decided lack of a display of talents."

Shin'ichi snorted. "Like that would stop him." 

"Very true." The blond admitted, glancing at the darkhaired gentleman who joined the queue next to him, wearing black speedos, but strangely enough was also wearing a knitted toque and was carrying a rifle over one shoulder as he smoked a cigarette. Shin'ichi noticed and shuffled closer to Heiji, away from the new guy. "-I would have thought you would have sniffed him out by now." 

Heiji sneezed, wrinkling his nose as he wiped his nose with the back of one hand. "Sorry. Prolly would have by now, but sprayed somethin' and now I can't smell a d'ing half the time. Real annoyin'." 

"Bless you." Hakuba saluted, taking a step away from his weapons carrying neighbour. 

"Oi." Heiji reached out and tugged Shin'ichi's swim shorts a bit lower on his hips, so that they showed the curve of his hip bones a bit better.

"Hattori!" Shin'ichi yelped, jumping a bit. "What?"

"Don't be such a prude." Heiji smirked as he straightened, drawing attention to the his snug fitting speedos. "It couldn't hurt ta show a bit more skin. And it's not like Neechan's gonna argue."

The Detective of the East glared at his friend, leaning towards the undead detective. "Is it just me, or do those speedos make his butt look big?" He muttered just loudly enough for Hakuba to hear him. 

Hakuba debated this. "You've obviously never been to some of the nude beaches in Europe." He finally concluded. There were a lot worse sights out there than the Kansai Detective in budgie smugglers. He change the subject. "Interesting. Both of you have scars in the same place. I would have thought Hattori-kun wouldn't."

"Huh?" Both teenagers looked down at the prominent scars on the left side of their lower torsos. Shin'ichi tugged his shorts down a little farther to look at the pale scar on his skin.

"Well, maybe not the exact same place." Hakuba amended. "Hattori-kun's is a little farther left than Shin'ichi-kun's, but they are in remarkably similar places."

"Oh, that." Heiji shrugged, then sneezed again. "Geh. Yeah. Prolly wouldn't have left a scar if I hadn't gotten mad and picked the guy up and tossed him around a bit." 

"That was when you loaned me, er, Conan, your omamori, wasn't it? That time you invited us to Osaka." Shin'ichi commented, reaching over to poke the larger and more jagged scar that ran along Hattori's stomach. The entry point was obvious, but the puckered starburst shaped tearing around it. Even advanced werewolf metabolism had trouble dealing with injuries sometimes.

"Sakata-han? Yeah." The dark skinned boy didn't seem to hold a grudge against the former policeman. "Kinda surprised that yours isn't bigger. Didn't ya, uh, -grow- after ya got shot?"

"Yeah. Chasing some crooks in a cave." Shin'ichi ran a finger down the slightly puckered skin. "Ran even had to give me a transfusion after we got out, I'd lost so much blood in the cave. Course, when you're that small..."

The other two detectives nodded. When you're smaller, what may not seem like a lot of blood counts for a lot more. 

"And people wonder why I stick to chasing the Kid." Hakuba raised an eyebrow at the other two. "People don't try to kill you nearly as much."

The other two detectives looked sceptically the un-dead detective and said nothing.

+++

On the other side of the stage, Kazuha, Ran and Aoko watched Heiji tug on Shin'ichi's shorts with amusement, unable to hear the conversation.

"So..." Kazuha elbowed Ran, a smug expression on her face as Shin'ichi's swimsuit dipped a little lower, the other two detectives investigating the scar on his hip. "Soccer shorts, huh?"

"What?" Ran looked confused, then blushed slightly as she understood what Kazuha was saying. "Oh." Shin'ichi's swim shorts -were- a bit on the short side. 

Kazuha and Aoko giggled. "Like you've got room to talk." Ran elbowed Kazuha back. "What's that Heiji-kun's wearing?"

"If Heiji could get away with wearin' less, he would." Kazuha informed her primly. "Any excuse not to wear clothin', I swear." 

Ran's eyes went wide as she covered her mouth to giggle. 

"Really?" Aoko commented, taking her place Ran's other side. "How often that -that- happen?"

"... um..." Kazuha turned red as the other two giggled gleefully. "Oh, shut up! He's been like this since we were little!" 

"But you know... it's funny. I'd never noticed that Shin'ichi has a scar in the same place Conan-kun got shot before." Ran mused. 

"They do?" Aoko blinked.

"Yeah, right there on their hip." Ran pointed to her own. "I'll have to ask them about it later."

"Speakin' about Conan-kun..." Kazuha jumped up on the change in conversation. "Where is he?"

"Right there." Aoko motioned. "By the black spider parasol. He and Akako-chan are watching." 

"Should we say 'Hi'?" Kazuha grinned. The others grinned back. 

"HEY~ CONAN-KUN!!!!" The three girls cheered and waved.

+++

Conan laughed nervously, waving back. 

"Ooo..." Koizumi nudged him, an amused smirk on her face.. "Some body is popular."

"I'm safe for the girls to tease." Conan shrugged, sticking his hands in the pockets of his board shorts. He was a kid, at least as far as the girls knew. Too young to understand or react to bikini clad young women. "How come you're not up there, Akako-neechan?" 

Hidden by her matching cob-webbed black parasol, Koizumi smirked. "I wanted to give the other girls a chance for a change."

"Aah." The boy nodded. Just because the witch toned down her 'allure' around large crowds didn't mean that there was no effect. It was easily understandable her need not to be mobbed by half the population of the beach the second she stepped on stage. Such charisma had some drawbacks.

"And you?" The crimson-eyed witched gazed at the boys on stage impassively. "Would be up there if you could be?"

Conan looked at his larger half, sniping at the detectives on either side of him. "... No." He finally decided. He was content being where he was at the moment. Kudo Shin'ichi was back and that was really all that mattered. He had a chance to be a kid again, a chance few people in life had. He'd be remiss in wasting it trying to be big once more.

"Smart boy." Koizumi said. Conan smirked back. He hadn't exactly been a slouch in the mental department before he'd been shrunk and his brains hadn't decreased with his size. 

+++

The beach was filled with the sounds of screams, cheers and cat-calls. It was one that disturbed the people who had come to the beach with the intent of peace and quiet, but for those who had come to the strip of sand and sun to watched scantily clad nubile flesh, it was a glorious day indeed. 

The girls went first and Ran surprised many of her friends by having groupies, waving banners and signs declaring their undying love for her. Being a Karate Champion, especially a cute female Karate Champion, had the occasional perk and drawback besides self-defense and a killer body.

Shin'ichi, Heiji and Hakuba also had fangirls, and a few fanguys, as well. However, not all were cheering because of their detective skills. Kazuha and Ran nudged each other about each other's childhood friend's outfit. Or lack there of, in any case. Hakuba got many comments because of his pale solemn nature. 

Heiji and Ran won second place, winning a grand total of eight tickets to Miracle Land, enough for their entire group to go the amusement park. Shin'ichi and Kazuha, Saguru and Aoko got third and fourth, respectively. Which was just various beach paraphernalia. 

Shin'ichi and Kazuha also got a bit irritated at just how many pictures got taken of Ran and Heiji together. Especially since the Grand Prize winners --the cool acting speedo guy who had been standing next to Hakuba with the rifle over his shoulder and a girl who looked remarkably like a hyper bouncy bigger busted version Okino Yoko-- had vanished. The Grand prize tickets and trophies were gone as well, the winners apparently having claimed them before disappearing.

Even with the disappearance, it was mutually agreed by most people on the beach to have been a successful and entertaining, if a little mysterious, venture all around. 

+++

"I trust you had fun in our absence, Kaito-kun?" Koizumi purred as they approached their parasol. Kaito was sprawled out on one of the blankets, looking like a pleased happy cat in a sunbeam. 

He yawned and stretched, looking at them with sleepy eyes. "Oh. You were gone? How was the contest?"

"I got a hat." Hakuba informed him. "And six phone numbers."

Koizumi snapped the elastic waistband on his board shorts. "Seven."

"Oh, dear." Hakuba twisted around attempting to read the phone number that was written on his lower back while Koizumi not-quite leered as she watched the show. "How is one supposed to read -that-?"

Kaito snickered, leaving Koizumi to her small pleasures as he turned towards Aoko. "And you?" 

"I got a lot of cat calls." She admitted with a blush, glancing between the still turning Hakuba and Kaito. "And a couple of offers for coffee. I didn't accept any." 

Kaito grinned, slow and easy. The kind of grin that made her belly do somersaults. She cleared her throat. "What about you?" Aoko questioned. "What did you do while we were gone."

He shrugged back. "Oh, this and that. Nothing exciting." 

"That's good to hear." Aoko smiled, shoving the duffel next to him to the side so she could sit down next to him.

The duffel bag clunked. 

"Clunk?" Aoko echoed. Hakuba stopped spinning, looking at them. Koizumi pouted, her amusement interrupted.

Kaito fidgeted. "Um."

"I am fairly certain that none of our luggage said 'clunk' previous to our departure." Hakuba mused. Aoko nodded and opened the duffel as Kaito started to sweat.

Inside the duffel were two wigs, one long blond and curly, the other short and black and apparently attached to a knitted toque. There was also a jumble of cosmetic jars of various shades intermixed between a black speedo, a woman's one piece bathing suit and a pair of jell-o filled water balloons. 

And most importantly, two trophies. One for winning the Mens' Swimsuit Competition, one for winning the Woman's Swimsuit Competition. Aoko lifted the latter out, her eyes wide. 

Kaito smiled weakly. "... I won us tickets to Okinawa?" He offered, glancing between the pale faced Aoko and the stone faced Hakuba. "There's even an extra one if Koizumi or your father wants to go along." 

Aoko made a cut off choking sound as her face went from pale to angry red. "KAAAAAAIIIIIIIIII-" She brought the trophy down at where Kaito had been just milliseconds before. It made an impressive dent in the blanket covered sand. "-TOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

Never a fool, nor one to stick around where bodily harm was being threatened, Kaito took off running down the beach.

+++

"Hey..." Ran squinted her eyes before pointing in the direction of a fast moving object. "Isn't that Kuroba-kun?"

It was indeed Kaito who ran past them, grinning like a fiend. 

Aoko followed on his heels, cussing a blue streak and waving a glimmering trophy in the air like a club. She occasionally took a swing at him and missed. 

"WAAHHH-HOOO!!!" Heiji cheered, clambering to his feet and chasing after them. He was part German Shepherd after all. And as long as there was something moving, it was his job to chase it. 

"HEIJI!!!" Kazuha yelled, diving into her basket. She pulled out a collar and leash and proceeded to chase after him, waving the leash around as she did so. "AHOU!!! HEEL HEIJI!! HEEL!!!"

Ran stared after them. She shook her head slightly as if to clear it, then glanced down at Shin'ichi and Conan, who were laying under the beach umbrella, looking completely content not to move for the next millennium. "Should we chase after them?" Ran ventured. 

Conan looked at his larger half. Shin'ichi looked at his smaller half. They both put their heads down and closed their eyes. 

"Nah."

"No." The twins decided. "Let them-"

"-have their fun." 

Ran watched Koizumi and Hakuba amble by, Hakuba carrying his group's bags, Koizumi with the beach parasol over one shoulder, shading them both. They nodded to Ran as leisurely strolled along. Ran nodded back.

She thought it over for a moment, then laid down between Shin'ichi and Conan under the beach umbrella.

There were many ways to enjoy a bit of sun and surf at the beach. And as long as it was with friends, that's what really mattered in the end.

+++ Fin +++


End file.
